Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose

Valeria Montti Colque, Esben Weile Kjær, Ihsan Saad Ihsan Tahir och Matilda Tjäder

The exhibition ‘Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose’ gathers four contemporary artists working in Stockholm and Copenhagen. Their practices are united by investigative, experimental and conceptual approaches to global popular culture. Encounters with historical references prompt them to engage with contemporaneity and to add connections backwards and forwards. Visitors will meet sculptural settings, immersive sound pieces and performances inviting them to experience and understand how sites, notions and ideals shape-shift over time.

The exhibition title is borrowed from the best-known word play by American avant-garde writer Gertrude Stein (1874–1946). Through repetition the sentence demonstrates how words not only carry meaning but also exist as self-contained units. Stein’s poetic phrasing underlines the character of things and stresses their fundamental inherent nature. Contrasting with symbolic or metaphorical interpretations, the exhibition enhances unmediated experience as something that engenders strong impressions and emotions. The intention is to grant visitors direct access to art, and several of the works will enter into dialogue with the architecture of the kunsthalle.

Curators: Paula Ludusan Gibe and Sara Rossling