COPENHAGEN.- In his solo exhibition salthour at NILS STÆRK, Jone Kvie continues to investigate the interrelation of time, materiality, and human existence. His sculptures act as bridges between geological history and contemporary life, revealing how the physical remnants of Earth’s earliest forms remain embedded within our present reality. By weaving ancient materials and fossilized traces with familiar shapes and reimagined everyday objects, salthour invites viewers to reflect on and reconsider what it means to be human – not only in the here and now, but as part of a vast continuum.
Upon entering the exhibition, one first encounters the experience of time through mass (2025), a massive lava stone crater sourced from the still-active Mount Etna, resting on a steel structure. Presented as a geological specimen, its shape is reminiscent of an eye – silently watching. It evokes the remains of monumental ancient statues, where only fragments endure: an eye, a hand, a finger, yet each carrying deep significance. The crater holds the memory and threat of past and future eruptions, charged with both geological and symbolic force. As lava stone is an everyday material commonly used for pavements in cities like Naples and Pompeii, the sculpture also embodies the tension between the ordinary and the primordial. Like ancient relics, the experience of time through massinhabits the space between ruin and monument, geology and imagination.
On the back of the crater, almost like a quiet secret, lies a thin, curved, fossilized sheet of black rock containing traces of Earth’s earliest life: soft, mollusk-like organisms that once moved through the waters several hundred million years ago. This subtle gesture, easily overlooked, anchors the work’s symbolic gravity: from volcanic birth to evolutionary emergence, from chaos to cognition.
In direct dialogue with the experience of time through mass is revenant (2025), a large relief consisting of two marble sheets leaning against the wall, with geological patterns reminiscent of branching veins radiating from a central, spine-like structure. It suggests both anatomical diagrams and tectonic fissures. The work reflects the origins of complex life, alluding to the evolution of early multicellular organisms into the intricate nervous systems of advanced beings. In marble, this evolutionary arc becomes monumental – a meditation on the delicate emergence of life as it takes shape within the contemporary body.
Detritus (2025) continues Kvie’s long-standing engagement with found materials sourced from the urban fabric of Naples. In a city where stone is both abundant and disposable, Kvie reimagines discarded objects and transforms them into sculptures that hover between function and ritual. Originally designed as a bathroom countertop, the form now takes on a quiet, humanoid presence – solitary, almost body-like in its stance.
What once invited now resists, standing instead as a monument to transformation. Kvie’s sculptural playfulness recalls the language of early modernism, particularly Hans Arp’s biomorphic forms assembled with intuitive precision.
The eponymous work salthour(2025) expands Kvie’s investigation of overlooked urban fragments, reimagined as sculptural markers. Two travertine forms recall protective elements that guard gateposts from urban wear and vehicle damage. Resting quietly in a corner, their placement evokes a forgotten ritualism – at once peculiar and dignified – where the banal is quietly elevated into something transcendent.
Positioned against a wall near the entrance, Mask (2025) bridges mythic symbolism and human contradiction. The work echoes imagery from the earliest depictions of masks while simultaneously drawing from the Neapolitan character Pulcinella, conjuring both archetype and apparition. Pulcinella, the trickster of commedia dell’arte, is at once lovable and violent, foolish and visionary – a symbol of chaos, humor, and the conflicted nature of humanity. Kvie’s Mask is not fixed; it tilts, watches, remembers. It becomes an emblem of duality, the ambiguity at the heart of being human.
Across the exhibition, Kvie moves fluidly between high and low, natural and constructed, mystical and mundane. His work merges worlds, offering a shift in perspective and inviting us to see human existence not in isolation, but as part of Earth’s slow, unfolding memory.
Jone Kvie Born in Stavanger, NO, 1971 Lives and works in Naples, IT and Stavanger, NO
Jone Kvie explores the understanding of the world and our place in it through sculpture, examining both the possibilities and limitations of the medium. His work evokes uncertainty and sparks multiple associations, resisting fixed narratives. By translating natural phenomena like meteors and star clusters into sculptural forms, Kvie captures the essence of the unknown, blending scientific concepts with abstract aesthetics. His sculptures distill complex ideas into tangible shapes, challenging viewers to rethink their perceptions.
Kvie’s selection of materials – ranging from metals and minerals to organic substances – reflects his focus on both their structural qualities and poetic potential. His sculptures explore the intersection of art and science, transforming abstract concepts into physical forms that go beyond their immediate presence, inviting reflection on the relationship between the known and the unfamiliar.
