COPENHAGEN.- With expanses of painted, embroidered, stitched and mounted textiles Danish artist Mette Winckelmann creates a total installation in dialogue with the Late Baroque architecture of Gammel Holtegaard.

Mette Winckelmann’s (b.1971) new solo exhibition Stop Calling Me Names is a total installation of encounters and refractions between new and old structures and systems encompassing the entire building of Gammel Holtegaard. Winckelmann gets to grips with the historical galleries with pencil and ruler, dividing the galleries into new spaces with imaginary walls.

The artist superimposes her distinctive grid on the ground plan of the Late Baroque Danish architect Lauritz de Thurah. Layer after layer Winckelmann intervenes in the physical space with a series of works juxtaposing more layers of textiles with industrial, pre-designed patterns and her own hand-printed world of imagery.

Mette Winckelmann’s total installation unfolds both sculpturally and spatially. Her works are powerfully sensual and visually appealing, yet borne by a clear conceptual approach based on underlying systems and structures.

Winckelmann often works with textiles familiar from our everyday lives. At the same time, the underlying mathematical system of the work is constantly present, as are clear references to art and cultural history ranging from the abstract painting of the 1900s to contemporary pop music and visual culture.

Forms and colours, materials, technique and craft – and not least the narratives associated with them – intersect in Winckelmann’s art, which harbours her thoughts on hierarchies, society and the human condition beneath the surface.

Mette Winckelmann sees her work as a process. By choice she would keep them at a stage where they remain in principle incomplete. To underline this sense of flux and openness the artist will continue to work on the installation throughout the exhibition period. The artist’s title Stop Calling Me Names reflects Winckelmann’s desire to create a space of her own, free of historical and established structures.

Mette Winckelmann (b. 1971) works and lives in Copenhagen. She graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2003, and the Academy of Art and Design in Slovakia in 1997. She has exhibited extensively, including at Moderna Museet in Malmö, Sweden and Sorø Kunstmuseum, Kunstmuseet Brundlund Castle Art Museum, and Overgaden – Institute of Contemporary Art in Denmark. Winckelmann is represented in a range of museum collections in Denmark and abroad.