TOVES, Copenhagen
October 10 – November 2, 2013

Sol Calero & Christopher Kline

Sol Calero

Sol Calero & Christhopher Kline

Sol Calero & Christhopher Kline

Sol Calero & Christhopher Kline

Sol Calero

Sol Calero & Christhopher Kline

Sol Calero & Christhopher Kline

Sol Calero & Christhopher Kline

Sol Calero & Christhopher Kline

Sol Calero & Christhopher Kline

Sol Calero & Christhopher Kline

In Modern Dowry Venezuelan Sol Calero and American Christopher Kline continue their project trajectory dealing with ethnography, historical subjectivity, storage, logistics, craft and ancient and tribal art in relation to modernism. 

Based on the custom of dowries: the distribution of valuables from the bride’s family to the groom during marriage ceremonies, the exhibition investigates different objects that constitute a traditional dowry. Cubist and Constructivist features assume three-dimensionality resembling furniture and ceramics in interim materials such as fabrics collected on their travels and handcrafted wooden and cardboard elements. Puzzling together their own dowry Calero and Kline inject seemingly inanimate objects with character and tenderness to showcase close aesthetic and cultural relationships between the artifacts emphasizing distant narratives that linger through time.

Their art practice lends a landscape to the abstraction of tradition, ritual and offering viewed through a backwards modernist lens. Moving objects slightly out of their traditional comfort zone opens the door ajar to a moment of subtle importance. In this way Calero and Kline are asking what gets passed on for posterity and for what purpose.

Sol Calero and Christopher Kline have previously collaborated on projects and publications including Field Studies, Case Report/Liminal Rites and Regalos Ancestrales. Together they run the exhibition space Kinderhook & Caracas in Berlin.