In this exhibition Ebbe Stub Wittrup suspends the rules of reality in

an exploration of lifes enigmatic layers.

11 FEBRUARY - 1 APRIL 2012 ESSAY & INTERVIEW
PLEASE JOIN US FOR THE PREVIEW
10 FEBRUARY, 5-8PM
EBBE STUB WITTRUP
ESSAY
THE VOICE OF THINGS
The Existence of the Possible
By Anna Holm, Overgaden
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Albert Einstein, 1930
The question of what is real has
been debated throughout the entire
history of humanity: Is it what our
senses tell us, or is there a world
beyond what we can immediately
perceive? In this philosophical field,
Ebbe Stub Wittrup explores lifes
enigmatic layers by highlighting
phenomena and material drawn
from the periphery of culture. His
work emphasizes the otherness of
reality which, as the art historian
Rune Gade has put it, runs like an
esoteric undercurrent beneath the
realistic subject matter. Since the
late 1990s, Stub Wittrup has been
extending his photographic prac-
tice, in a movement from a neo-
realistic snapshot aesthetics to a
more conceptual sensibility with
historical and literary dimensions.
In the solo exhibition !"# 9&,2# &-
!",/0', this movement finds expres-
sion in a cross-media field in which
fiction, mythology and theosophy
are interwoven with optical and co-
lour-psychological phenomena.

The front exhibition room on the
ground floor of Overgaden lies in
semi-darkness. A thick, white cur-
tain conceals the windows facing
the canal, and blocks the view of
everyday life on Torvegade; a thea-
trical gesture that signals that we
are about to step into a world in
which the usual concepts of reality
are suspended. Here, the film instal-
lation :*67 ;&'# < = >.*7 ,/ !"6##
=2(' (2011) is presented, which
like previous works by Ebbe Stub
Wittrup is based on a specific place
shrouded in myth. This time it is the
rugged, storm-swept islands of the
Hebrides, which both in local tales
and in the world of fiction have
been associated with mysterious
disappearances, including those de-
scribed by the Scottish writer J.M.
Barrie in the play from which the in-
stallation takes its name. The play,
written in 1920, is partly set on the
island of Harris, where the storys
protagonist, Mary Rose, disappears
into a timeless parallel world; first
as a child, and later as an adult,
where after several decades she re-
turns without having aged, and with
no recollection of what has tran-
spired. On the basis of these sto-
ries, the work, consisting of three
black and white 16mm films, medi-
tates on possible dimensions other
than those we can see with the na-
ked eye. In displaced film sequen-
ces, gothic scenes of desolate land-
scapes and abandoned houses fade
into lingering images of the mouth
of the legendary Fingals Cave. The
cave opens up in the cliff like a por-
tal to another world, and is reputed
in Celtic mythology, and later in-
theosophy, to possess supernatu-
ral powers. From the third film strip,
razor-sharp images of objects as-
sociated with occult lore appear: An
old book filled with closely packed,
looping handwriting and a large, lu-
minous crystal, which in an insis-
tent materiality have a hyper-real
appearance against the black back-
ground. Fluctuating between pas-
sive recording and the metaphori-
cal, the films' levels of reality and
fiction are woven into each other
in a suggestive universe of intense
suspense, which opens up the con-
cept of reality in an ontological va-
cillation between the perceived and
the imagined.

In the work !"# ?/@,*/ ;&5# !6,2A
(2011), the perspective shifts from
the fantastic to the illusory. The
trick is reputed to be one of the
worlds oldest illusions, but in fact
it can only be dated back to 1890,
when it was first described by the
journalist John Elbert Wilkie in the
Chicago Tribune. Shortly afterwards
the story was exposed in the same
newspaper as pure fiction, but the
trick had already taken hold in the
public consciousness, and has since
been performed in several places
in India. The product of one mans
imagination has thereby become a
collective reality, which, like myth,
in the perspective of the semioti-
cian Roland Barthes, has forgot-
ten its own historical genesis. In the
work, which consists of a video and
an object, Stub Wittrup does not
address the tricks ideological and
historical implications, but instead
attempts to approach the myth as a
formal figure. A rope rises up from
the floor in the middle of the exhibi-
tion space and floats in the air like a
physical impossibility, which makes
the trick both concrete and abstract
by reducing it to a primordial form
found in several cultures. The same
oscillation between form and con-
tent is present in the video work,
in which the eye is drawn into the
hypnotic compositions of ascending
and descending ropes of varying
sizes. The film is designed like a M-
bius strip that continues indefinitely
through a mirror image of the same
recordings. In an unbroken move-
ment, outside becomes inside, like
a pictorialisation of the nature of
the myth and the viewers encoun-
ter with the artwork. The mean-
ing arises in an intersubjective tape
loop of physical and mental reality,
slipping imperceptibly into itself like
the outer and inner sides of the M-
bius strip.

The optical illusion is given more
concrete form in the work B.*''
C+)# (2011), which brings the view-
ers own senses into play. On top
of a completely transparent cube
rests an identical cube of polarised
glass that alters the frequency of
the light and changes its phase, so
that it changes character, depend-
ing on the perspective. Seen from
one location you see right through
the grey box, while from another it
closes up into a solid black form. In
a particular position the work be-
haves like a so-called Necker cube,
in which the observer experiences
a switch in the perception of what is
seen. Suddenly the box is oriented
differently. The side which was pre-
viously in front is now at the back.
On the immediate level, the work
calls forth associations with the
aesthetics of minimalism and its in-
terest in the phenomenology of the
artwork, but rather than empha-
sizing the objects independence,
Stub Wittrup challenges the con-
cept of the object as a stable phe-
nomenon. Like the other works, the
cube shifts between outer and inner
space, between transparency and
opacity, whereby viewers in addi-
tion to being made aware of their
own role in the act of perception
find that their faith in the seen is
shaken. In this way, the work opens
up a critique of the rational Western
understanding of the world, linked
as it is to an empirical tradition and
the prioritisation of the sense of
sight as a channel of objective in-
formation.
The subjective nature of sensory
perception is further accentuated in
the final series of works in the ex-
hibition, which reflects upon colour
phenomena as a bridge to the un-
conscious. These works are based
on the controversial personality
test formulated by the Swiss psy-
choanalyst Max Lscher in 1948,
which was used to identify psycho-
logical profiles on the basis of the
test subject's colour preferences.
As in !"# ?/@,*/ ;&5# !6,2AD the
conceptual model has retreated into
the background in a deliberate at-
tempt to open up the viewers own
interpretative space. In the work
E C&.&+6#@ C*6@' (2011), the eight
cards of the test are reproduced as
a series of portraits, each of which
represents a fictitious personality.
In the absence of Lschers key to
the test, the interpretation of the
signs is left to the viewer, who
ascribes meaning to them via her
own associations and in the con-
text of her own time. The same ap-
plies to the work F,0"( C*6@' G.#/@4
,/0 C&.&+6' (2011), which forms a
contrast to Lschers simplifying
classifica tion of the psyche. Slides
of the eight colours of the test
gradually blend into each other,
adding countless new mixed shades
to the colour spectrum, which,
when projected onto the wall, opens
up like a mental landscape that is
constantly changing in depth and
mood. As a phenomenon, colour is
at once comprehensible and incom-
prehensible. In objective terms col-
ours do not exist, they are an illu-
sion but nonetheless a reality.
In the gap between the myths of
culture and the sensing conscious-
ness, the exhibition subtly weaves
several parallel levels and modes of
cognition together, to form an am-
biguous picture of reality. Through
the displaced view of myth towards
Ebbe Stub Wittrup, !"#$ &'() * + ,-"$ ./ 01#)) +23(4 2011
Overgaden. Institute of Contemporary Art, Overgaden Neden Vandet 17, DK-1414 Copenhagen K, + 45 3257-7273, info@overgaden.org, www.overgaden.org. Tuesday-Sunday 1-5pm, Thursday 1-8pm
Design: Annis
CV
Ebbe Stub Wittrup (b. 1973) graduated from The Academy of Fine Arts in Prague in 1999. He
has had several solo exhibitions, recently at Nusser & Baumgart, Munich, 2011, and Martin Asbk
Gallery, Copenhagen, 2010. His works have also been exhibited in a number of group shows, for
instance at Kunsthallen Brandts, Odense, 2011; ParisCONCRET, 2011; Galleri Christina Wilson, Co-
penhagen, 2010; Otto Zoo, Milan, 2009, and Arken, Ishj, 2007. In 2010, Ebbe Stub Wittrup was
the recipient of The Danish Arts Councils 3-year grant. In 2011 he published the book >6#'+%#@
;#*.,(7 at Hatje Cantz Verlag. Ebbe Stub Wittrup lives in Copenhagen.
LECTURE
Thursday 1 March at 5pm Overgaden invites you to a lecture on Goethes phenomenology by
Henrik Botius, who is associate professor at Laboratory for Colour at The Royal Danish Aca-
demy of Fine Arts.
RADIO PLAY
Thursday 15 March at 7pm Foley artist Helge Haahr and three actors will perform a radio play by
author Gitte Broeng which is based on J.M. Barries play :*67 ;&'# from 1920. The performance
will take place in the exhibition space and will create auditory clues to Ebbe Stub Wittrups film
installation :*67 ;&'# < = >.*7 ,/ !"6## =2('8
UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS
Friday 13 April 2012 Overgaden presents the exhibition !,/0#/ < H6&% ("# B6##2# B6&5#6' H&+/4
@*(,&/ by Jeuno JE Kim and Lasse Krog Mller. The last day of the exhibition is 3 June 2012.
Concurrently, Overgaden has dedicated the top storey to a number of brief projects and longer
events that under the title H,6'( H.&&6 present aspects of contemporary art that are rarely of-
fered space in the more established institutional contexts.
Ebbe Stub Wittrup would like to thank Martin Asbk, Anders Sune Berg, Henrik Botius, Gitte
Broeng, Jrgen Castenskiold, Claus Handberg Christensen, Jesper Fabricius, Ulrik Heltoft, Rikke
Hvejsel, Kim Hgh, Helge Haahr, Thomas Ibsen, Mathias Lorentz, Basil McKinley, Jonas Raam,
Carl Johan Sennels, Julie Quottrup Silbermann, Mia Bang Stenberg, David Stjernholm, The Dan-
ish Art Workshops, and Overgaden.
Translation: Billy OShea
This exhibition folder can be downloaded from www.overgaden.org
Overgaden is supported by The Danish Arts Councils Commitee for Visual Arts
and The Obel Family Foundation
the world and its phenomena, the
works establish various modes of
transformation and transgression
that open up the possibility of pur-
suing alternative paths into the
material. Using a strict and formal
technique, Ebbe Stub Wittrup mer-
ges idea and materiality at the edge
of language and logic, and points
to what could have been, and which
perhaps is, but which we have not
yet called reality. Like this the world
presents itself to us, not as a stable
reality, but as a constant state of
possibility that is constructed, takes
shape and changes in the encoun-
ter with a sensing subject.
INTERVIEW
Gerusch Meister
By Claus Handberg Christensen
Claus Handberg Christensen I&+6
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Ebbe Stub Wittrup Yes, thats
right. Theres quite a lot of research
involved in many of my works, and
this forms the basis for some more
intuitive processes that often end
up creating connections. For exam-
ple, part of the exhibition is based
on the play :*67 ;&'# by J.M. Bar-
rie. The play is about a woman who
disappears several times on the is-
land of Harris in the Hebrides; first
for 21 days and then for 25 years,
during which she has been in a pa-
rallel world that is never further de-
scribed in the play. What interested
me about the play is that its about
something that lies outside the sto-
ry, which gives me an opportunity
to reinvent the material. Later on
I found out that the BBC had made
a documentary about the island in
which several people reportedly
had the same experience as in the
play. So I travelled to Harris to see
if I could find anything to indicate
how the phenomenon might have
occurred.
Three films resulted from that. One
deals with the place where the play
unfolds, and also involves a few lo-
cations from the BBC documen-
tary. The second film is based on
Fingals Cave, located on the island
of Staffa, also in the Hebrides. The
cave consists of hexagonal basalt
columns, and is a place that many
people have studied, including Ru-
dolf Steiner, who ascribed super-
natural powers to it. In the third
film we see a crystal from Mexico
and a book on graphology, which
establishes a link to another part
of the exhibition, which is about
some colour cards that were de-
veloped for personality tests. The
cards come with a book I had to
buy several copies of it to get a set
of identical cards. With one of the
books, an extra book about grapho-
logy happened to be included. It
was from the 1920s, and contained
analyses of the handwriting of vari-
ous authors, reading it I discove-
red that the only thing J.M. Barrie
had ever written with his left hand
was the play :*67 ;&'#. I became
very interested in this, because it is
said that if you write with your left
hand you gain access to the brain
hemisphere which is not based on
reason, and this might shed some
light on how the play came into ex-
istence.
So there are multiple links in and
between the works, which include
aspects of the same phenomena.
I should emphasize that I have not
taken any position on whether
something is true or false. It is the
mythical aspect alone that inter-
ests me.
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ESW That is a very accurate de-
scription of my way of working. I
become fascinated by something
and follow the pathways that lie
buried in the material. Curiosity is
the driving force.
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ESW Formally, a rope that rises up
in the air is a figure that appears
in several cultures as a kind of col-
lective primordial form. As it is also
the first figure I began to work with
in connection with this exhibition, it
represents a kind of doorway to my
work. The film of the ropes shows
various compositions that have a
perspective within them and create
an optical illusion. The ropes vary
in size. Some of them are descend-
ing, others ascending, depending
on which way they are oriented.
The film has no ending, it continues
to mirror the same recordings. It is
not a loop, but forms a Mbius strip
a strip with a half-twist, so that it
only has one side. If you run your
finger along such a strip, you come
from the inside to the outside in the
same movement. It is at one and
the same time quite concrete and
entirely abstract like the myth.
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ESW Yes, and how ideas can be-
come reality. As I briefly mention-
ed earlier, there is a giant crys-
tal in one of the :*67 ;&'# films.
Its there for two reasons: First of
all because it has the same shape
as the hexagonal basalt columns
in Fingals Cave, and thereby pro-
vides a complementary response
to them, and secondly because it
comes from a cave in Mexico which
was described by Buddhists and sci-
ence fiction writers before it was
even discovered. The cave was first
discovered in 2000, but the idea of
it goes far back in time. So its hard
to say which came first, the idea or
the cave.
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ESW There may well be something
underlying, somewhere or other,
that forms the idea, yes. That is
also why the exhibition is called !"#
9&,2# &- !",/0', which is a title
I borrowed from a book by the writ-
er Francis Ponge. Its about how
things project meaning in them-
selves, they possess a kind of lan-
guage. There is a phenomenon
called synaesthesia, which is a clini-
cal term for sensory disturbances.
Some people hear a note when they
see a colour, or taste something
when they hear a note. You might
also call it translations from an-
other language a language which
is beyond our logic. I am fascinated
by what you can produce in such
translations.
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ESW Very much so. Take the works
with the coloured cards, for exam-
ple. I used them because the col-
ours illustrate psychological states,
but they are also interesting in that
they already exist in language in
a concrete form, as for example
when we colloquially say Its all in
the cards or The whole house of
cards came tumbling down. These
linguistic constructs are useful be-
cause they create an entrance and
a form that ensures that things do
not coalesce entirely and end up
as pure acid. Another feature of
the cards is that, as I said, they are
used in personality testing, which
is to say, to describe someone. The
theory that eight differently colou-
red cards can reflect your persona-
lity is of course somewhat ques-
tionable, but the idea itself is bril-
liant. Whether it works or not is
completely irrelevant to me. At any
rate, I photographed the cards in
the same way that you would pho-
tograph a human being. I used an 8
x 10 inch camera, which is a classic
format that many portrait photo-
graphers use, because it creates
the most objective view of a per-
son. The lighting is also quite clas-
sic. Technically, it has been done by
the book, as a way of pursuing an
idea all the way.
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ESW The exhibition is a bit like
the play. The play has a dialogue
and a cast of characters, which is
all very concrete, but its really all
about the space that lies outside
the story, and which we never ac-
tually see in the play itself. It is
merely suggested. During the ex-
hibition, a radio play will be per-
formed in which three actors read
an adapted excerpt from the play
while sitting in chairs wearing their
own clothes. The session involves a
so-called geruschmeister or Foley
artist, which is to say, a sound tech-
nician who creates sound effects
on the spot. He might for example
use coconuts to imitate the sound
of horse hooves, or potato flour to
create the sound of someone walk-
ing through snow, and in this way
an illusory space is created through
the sounds. I think it will be a kind
of foundation course in illusions. In
all humility.
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ESW Its all about the unfinished.
That which contrasts with a system,
or whatever you might call it. If you
take for example a building which
for some reason was never built,
whether for economic or political
reasons, then there is only the idea
of the building. It is in a way inde-
pendent of time, as it has not been
fixed in space. The point is that it
has not become part of a system.
Only the mythological aspect re-
mains, and so it can be reinvented.
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ESW I dont feel that I have to read
all kinds of books and obtain some
comprehensive knowledge of the
field. The important thing for me is
the unfinished. So yes, in that re-
spect the enigmas are important.
They create a space with many pos-
sible stories and understandings,
which you should preferably sense
when you are confronted with the
works. I hope that the sum of the
works creates the sensation of a
third space a space that must be
sensed.
Claus Handberg Christensen is a writer who
lives in Copenhagen.
Ebbe Stub Wittrup, 5-"(( 678), 2011