Dorte Jelstrup Back Catalogue

The exhibition Dorte Jelstrup Back Catalogue presents a retrospective overview of Dorte Jelstrup's works. The constructive principle of this retrospective overview, however, differs from the classic linear chronologically constructed retrospective exhibition.

In keeping with the way Jelstrup sees her own oeuvre, the exhibition Dorte Jelstrup Back Catalogue is built on a cyclical principle, whereby the viewer is invited to go back and forth between key work categories in Jelstrup's artistic production, be it the satin ribbon painting, the pen and ink drawing, the installation, the montage and the performative photography, which in precisely cyclic movements reemerge again and again in Jelstrup's work - gathered around a basic thematic axis, where the feminine self and its relation to the male Other are constantly recurring semantic key points.

“I see the totality of my oeuvre as a cyclic enterprise in which both meaning components and material and aesthetic elements are circulated and recycled over and over again; each time from a slightly different angle and in a slightly different way. Basically, my work is about the being of the feminine subject, the feminine subject as an expression of a fundamental subjectivity - as well as this feminine subjectivity’s relation to the male Other presented either as a dream, by a coupling to a memory or as a perceptual representation of an imaginative mental state that takes bearing on a figure or being of another world.
”

— Dorte Jelstrup

Dorte Jelstrup: Works and biography

Dorte Jelstrup's works investigate subjective mental states of longing, desire, dream and remembrance and are theatrical and narrative in nature - with an emphasis on a materiality of sensation which connotes sensualism and femininity.

Furthermore, the later works of Dorte Jelstrup establish a link to the art historical modernism, primarily early avant-garde movements of the twentieth century such as Constructivism and Surrealism in a critical reflection upon the marginalization of modernism of a feminine world of experience.

Dorte Jelstrup lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark. She holds an MA in Philosophy from The University of Copenhagen. Dorte Jelstrup has exhibited widely inside and outside Denmark. Previous shows include Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2019, Västerås Konstmuseum, Västerås, Sweden, 2014, Sørlandets Kunstmuseum, Kristiansand, Norway, 2013, Kino.Lab, Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, Poland, 2013, Galleri Lars Olsen, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2012, MUSECPMI, Center of Photography and the Moving Image, New York, USA, 2011, Galerie Mikael Andersen, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2011, Kunsthallen Brandts, Odense, Denmark, 2010 and Loop Video Art Festival, Barcelona, Spain, 2010.

Dorte Jelstrup's works are featured in the collections of prominent institutions, including the National Gallery of Denmark, Museum Sønderjylland - Tønder Art Museum, Tønder, and the Danish Arts Foundation.

Dorte Jelstrup's works have been awarded by the Danish Arts Foundation in 1996, 2003, 2006 and 2017, and in 2008 she recieved the Grant of Honor of the Anne Marie Telmanyi born Carl-Nielsens Foundation, Denmark, for her outstanding oeuvre. Furthermore, in 2013 she received the Ole Haslunds Grant of Honor.

Installation view. Dorte Jelstrup. You ask me if I love you, it's automatic (You're all I wanna do), II, 2017-2019. Acrylic, pigment and satin ribbons on linen. 250 x 190 cm.

Dorte Jelstrup. You ask me if I love you, it's automatic (You're all I wanna do), II, 2017-2019. Acrylic, pigment and satin ribbons on linen. 250 x 190 cm.

Available