Galleri Nicolai Wallner is pleased to present "13 Tools", a solo exhibition by E.B. Itso. This show marks E.B. Itso’s second solo with the gallery.

Both poetic and minimal, E.B. Itso’s exhibition is composed of a single work of the same name. Thirteen ladders are leaning up against the walls. Found objects, they come from the headquarters of the company responsible for the maintenance and the day-to-day control of railway transit throughout Denmark.

In the context of the exhibition, thirteen ladders become thirteen objects or sculptures. They are defined by the practicality of their form and nature, but their installation within the gallery leaves their context deliberately open.

A close inspection of their handmade construction reveals a level of detail, pride and craftsmanship that gives way to a certain kind of elegance. Each is a perfect copy of the next, and the identical shape and the way that they fit against each other is almost as if they were one singular form or organism.

Spread throughout the space, they take on new meanings. One reading sees them as much more abstract, like a minimalist sculpture with sharp lines dividing the room. Another sees them as more biomorphic, like an extension of the body, almost lifelike in the way they are posed.

For E.B. Itso, the ladders are tools, symbolising escape, exploration, acts of reaching up or moving down, the ability to gain access to the spaces that exist throughout the city, above and below eye-level.

The ladders were once used, meant to be moved and brought to wherever they were needed. Their placement in the gallery echoes these activities, acknowledging the more obscure and covert movements that take place unseen.

E.B. Itso is known for his interest in what lies beyond the limits of everyday life, concerning himself with the factions of people who have intentionally chosen to live outside of what is considered socially conventional. E.B. Itso has shown in institutions and galleries in the US and Europe, notably at ARoS (Aarhus), CAC Contemporary Art Centre (Vilnius), Kunsthal Charlottenborg (Copenhagen), Fórum Fundação Eugénio de Almeida (Evora), ICA Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia) and Printed Matter (New York) among others. His work has also been recently shown as part of the ARoS Triennial.