About the Artist

 

 

 

 

 

 

BIO

Heidi Hove was born in Denmark in 1976 and currently lives and works in Copenhagen. She graduated at Funen Art Academy (DK) in 2007 and has been studying one year (05/06) at the MFA program at California College of the Arts in San Francisco (US). Furthermore, she is co-director of the exhibition site, Koh-i-noor in Copenhagen and the artist-apartment and residency, The Berlin Office in Kreuzberg, Berlin.

Heidi is an interdisciplinary artist, whose work explores the lives of ordinary individuals and the public and private spaces that we daily travel through. The medium is primarily objects and social & spatial interventions. Starting from the nearby environment, she explores the way we are navigating and arranging us in the world. Through simple and diverse manipulations, the daily and the recognizable is being brought out of its regular condition. Common and ordinary objects are copied and placed in new connections for the purpose of changing the meaning or perception of how we look and deal with these in our daily lives. The works are often simple, but rich in insight. Cultural differences (or the lack of these) are being highlighted and she questions the possibilities and limitations of private and public spaces. Humor, precision and perceptual presence is characterizing her work.

One example is The Prohibition Sign (2007), which is a Disneyfied prohibition, that have been moved away from its original settings in California and placed outside a small, Danish airport. In California the sign naturally fits into its original environment. At the airport in Denmark (in a replica edition) the message becomes ambiguous with the brightly colored layout opposed to the restrictive prohibition. Besides that, it also points out an American phenomenon: the privatization and the regulations of the public space. Another example is In Memory of You (2008), which is an American memorial park bench made of long-lasting plastic, whose openly message and diverging design generates a confusion by the user of the bench in the mixed neighborhood of Sundholm (Amager) in Copenhagen.

Heidi is very influenced by her social surroundings. Especially, people’s habits and behavior patterns toward the things we surround ourselves with are carefully being examined. This has among other things been brought into focus in the work, The Desk (2008), in which the forgotten and hidden gum, which resides under all high school classroom tables, grows into something more ominous beneath a high school desk. Similar additions to existing objects are also found in the work, Formations on Shelf (2006), where objects are weighed down on heavy layers of sugar, which is making them collapse.

These are all together objects in which the surface seem immediate pleasant, but also a metaphor on the reality which often seduce (or deceive) us. It seems to be an illustration of our constant hunt for the beautiful and the conforming according to rules. In other words, everything that standardizes us and removes us from the individual multifarious. There seem to be something future-oriented about her work - a sort of future illusion. However, you will constantly be reminded of how easily these illusions will break.

The work of Heidi Hove has been shown both nationally and internationally at The Factory of Art and Design, Copenhagen; The Lab, San Francisco; Lawndale Art Center, Houston, Parkingallery, Tehran; Rhys Gallery, Boston; Sparwasser HQ, Berlin; and more.