BIRGITTE STØVRING: GODDESS GARDEN
Open September 7 - October 19, 2023
Birgitte Støvring, The Snake Above, Acrylic and oil on canvas, 2023.
Alanna Miller, with generous support from The Danish Art Foundation, is pleased to announce Goddess Garden, a solo exhibition of work by Danish artist Birgitte Støvring, opening Thursday, September 7, 2023, from 6-8 pm.
For her first show in the United States, Birgitte Støvring has created a body of work that seeks to merge mythological conceptions of womanhood with a modern perspective that is informed by her own artistic and personal journey.
Støvring achieves this by presenting large-scale figurative paintings in a deceptively flat style that is synonymous with the birth of Modern Art. Rather than setting her female figures against a horizon, or in a recognizable setting, Støvring sets them among large swaths of color and pattern, typified by her signature brushstroke. Her colorful scenes combine modern and ancient in both concept and style, giving her compositions a narrative quality characteristic of ancient low-relief Greek decorative frieze.
Drawing from the time-old wellspring of feminine mythology, Støvring considers ancestry, womanhood, and collective ideas of birth and cyclicality to parse out her own personal connection to a higher power—to a greater divine.
In this pursuit, Støvring invokes ancient goddesses who she renders modern through a unique language of signs and symbols. Støvring references the great identifiers of modern goddesses, identifiers inherited from pre-Christianity.
Her circles are representations of fertility, cyclicality, and the “wheel of life.” Her mirrored figures, a recurring theme throughout her practice, symbolize cohesion and connection. Her figures are surrounded by repeating patterns which cover backgrounds containing vessels styled after ancient Greek amphoras, further evoking antiquity. From her vessels and the hands of her goddesses spring vivid flora and vegetation, underlining a mysterious and magical feminine connection to the earth which reverberates through Støvring’s practice.
Specifically, red poppies grow abundantly in the goddess garden, representative of Støvring’s personal metaphor for life and impermanence. Described by the artist as “ditch-edge flowers,” poppies are an aggressive blood colored wildflower which spread their seeds in the wind. They are also a deeply fragile flower which cannot be picked, since they drop their leaves almost immediately. There is an unspoken understanding that roots and place of origin are of paramount importance, as well as Støvring’s journey towards connection to the divine.
Having spent many years living in Copenhagen building her career, Støvring relocated to the rural town of Egtved, Denmark, where she hails from generations of successful horticulturists— a return to her roots. The difficult decision to transport her professional life was made when she became pregnant with her first child. Her new role in motherhood strengthened her belief that everything moves in circles. As she prepared to give life, she experienced a mythological driving force to return to her ancestors’ rural home in search of connection, place, and communion with the land. In doing so, perhaps this makes Støvring somewhat of a modern goddess herself, as she prioritizes the pursuit of divine connection through everything in her life.
Similar to the navigation of her own work and life balance, Støvring’s goddesses embody the dualities, contradictions, and responsibilities of women today. As ancient Greek and Norse goddesses Demeter and Freyja would have represented harvest, love, and fertility while also representing death, battle, and cyclicality, Birgitte Støvring’s modern goddesses contradict themselves, seek out connection, and maintain immense strength through change.
About the Artist
Danish artist Birgitte Støvring lives and works out of Egtved, Denmark. Støvring's work combines vibrant colors with geometric shapes and figures to explore ritual dance, the meeting of abstraction and figuration, and the human bodys eternal interaction with its surroundings. Her shifting fields of color morph and transform against the boundaries of her forms and generate symbolic dual imagery, creating an electric presentation of color and concept.
Birgitte Støvring received her MFA from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copehagen. She has participated in a considerable number of solo and group shows across Denmark and Eastern Europe, and has been commissioned to produce work for the Danish government.
About Alanna Miller
With over ten years of experience as an art dealer working with private collectors and corporate hospitalities, Alanna Miller is opening a new gallery space at 230 Mulberry Street in New York City, bringing her art advisory expertise to the storefront. The gallery will function as a dynamic, thoughtful space dedicated to emerging art.
Alanna Miller received her MA in Modern and Contemporary Art and the Market from Christie's Education in New York. She was sales assistant to blue chip art advisor Kim Heirston and Sales Director of Artemisa Gallery in New York City, specializing in emerging and contemporary Latin American art. Following her time with Artemisa, she spent several years in the specialized business of fine art licensing with Bridgeman Images. Alanna Miller brings a uniquely and carefully honed perspective into the gallery.