Press text:
Since he graduated from the Jutland Art Academy in 2016, the Danish artist Nour Fog has worked with sound, installation, and performances. In recent years, ceramics has been the starting point for creating works with integral technical components including sound, smoke, and movement capable of generating mood changes, transitions, and sensuality. Body Objects is Nour Fog’s first major solo show.
In the exhibition, a sculptural landscape emerges from the three groups of works Siren, Non-Binary Objects, and Organs along with a diversity of (natural) materials, forms, and expressions. Non-Binary Objects is a group of fluid organic shapes made in ceramic material with a metallic lustrous glaze. The sculptures are examinations of form condensed into pure archetypes, allowing abstract and minimalistic expressions to trigger associations; perhaps sensuous and erotically stimulating, social group dynamics, microbiological cell formations, or physical anatomy? The work shows a tension between opposites where Nour Fog suggests their mutual dependency by pointing out the dialogue and conflict that exist between them. The title Non-Binary Objects can be read with a gender-political bias; as a refusal to view phenomena binarily, instead hinting that there may, indeed, be more than just two nuances.
Siren, the most monumental work in the exhibition, is 3.60 m tall and takes possession of the gallery space with its massive physical volume. Inspired by the funnel-shaped form of a warning siren, the sculpture functions as an amplifier which regularly activates a siren’s song by human voices. The work is both alluring and threatening like the mythological female sirens, who called out to shipwrecked sailors only to devour them. The sculpture shows Nour Fog’s examinations of basic musical principles such as the reverb effect of musical instruments and how the design of ceramic hollows and openings are significant for the propagation of sound waves. The installation Organs in coarse sculpture clay describes the inside of the human body; kidneys, arteries, breasts, and buttocks. The elements have been suffused with spiritual and historical awareness in what resembles an archaeological dig featuring pot sherds, vases, and incense vessels: Here and there, the spouts of the sculpture emit a fine smoke, enveloping the space in mystery and a light mist.
Nour Fog addresses gender-political themes, musical science, and sensuality while his examination of form in sculpture, ceramic formulas, and glazes is inspired by everything from Japanese and Indian lacquer techniques, Venus from Willendorf, sci-fi, and classical archaeology. In his sculptures, the artist examines physical interior and exterior concepts via forms and spaces and, on a symbolic level, themes such as psychology, body, and sexuality.