COPENHAGEN.- A kinetic machine simulating snowing indoor in which pure white snowflakes descend and slowly change colour from white to black. At once strangely misplaced and intriguing, a subtle drama unfolds within the bittersweet beauty. Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art presents the work The Ashes of Snow, created specifically by the artist Carla Chan.

Manipulated by temperature, the colour of the snow particles changes by means of thermocrome technology, a specialised type of ink that changes colour when subjected to heat. The minimalist expression refers to traditional Chinese ink painting, adding a poetic dimension to the work. The starting point for Chan’s practice is an extended fear of nature and its phenomena and ambiguities. Here, it is the phenomenon of snow that undergoes Chan’s artistic focus. Inspired by a photograph of a snowy mountaintop covered by black layers of carbon particles from a nearby factory, Chan developed her twisted, double-sided language. What at first glance appears to be a spectacle of beauty is by closer look transformed into a scary reality. The otherwise contemplative snow landscape contains a discreet criticism and a concern for the future and for human’s impact on nature. In this way, the essence of Chan’s work is shaped by the awareness of climate change, as for instance the large amounts of chemical waste to which we expose nature, and it is exactly this destruction of the natural that is transferred to her aesthetic expression.

Chan herself comments on her practice: ”Travelling feeds my creative juices. I’m especially obsessed with the Scandinavian winter landscape and different oft-viewed nature areas that make me feel I am travelling to another planet. Those images are kept in my memory and eventually become my biggest source of inspiration”.

Chan’s installations evoke an overwhelming, sublime experience of nature located between reality and illusion, figuration and abstraction. Chan’s installations are often accompanied by a soundtrack that originates from computer-processed information and emphasize the presence of technology as a filter for and approach to moving closer to nature. The relationships within depictions of nature, technology and the human are significant tropes in Chan’s practice and reveal urgencies in global contemporary art discourses.

Carla Chan is born in Hong Kong (1989) and lives and works in Berlin and Hong Kong. Utilizing a variety of media including video, installation, photography and interactive media, Chan’s work carefully considers ambiguity in nature and our relationship with technology. Carla Chan obtained her Bachelor of Arts Degree from the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. Her work has been exhibited at venues such as ZKM Centre for Media and Technology; ZKM/Centre for Culture and Media Technology Karlsruhe, Germany Kraftwerk Berlin, Germany, Hong Kong Museum of Art and various festivals and biennales across Europe and Asia .