Presence

Exhibition by Simona Popovic, Sidsel Lindbæk Mouridsen, Christoffer Stiig and Sidsel Winther at Danske Grafikeres Hus, 2025

Ephemeral moments, frozen in time. Snapshots of an intimate presence, just before the light disappears and the shadows dissolve. Soft paper oversaturated with printing ink. A silence before a storm that might never come.

However different all the works might seem, they all have in common that they’re inhabited rooms, abandoned by humans. A certain presence is there. Or maybe more precisely; a presence that arises from an absence. An absence of human figures. An absence that makes the observer observe that some kind of anthropomorphic act has been going on prior to this moment, that’s now framed in time and space through the graphic process.

Analogue processes of printing require bodies and physical labour. It takes a pair of strong arms to work the ink, paper has to be torn without hesitation, mixing of colours activates the sense of tactility. Hand and body performs the work, but precisely these are absent in the pictorial landscape of the four artists. Maybe that’s what’s intuitively recognized in the meeting with graphic works. An attention to and care of hands, that stubbornly have held onto these moments of present absence. a tactile knowledge that has been passed on from generation to generation and are now in the hands of this young generation of artists.