Introduction

Introduction

At first sight, Olaf Breuning’s humoristic self-irony may appear simplified and accessible. But when one enters into his imagery, one discovers that it is rather more complex. The multilayered works comprise reflections on western society. While Breuning possesses the ability to see through our smug and hypocritical society, he does not dissociate himself from it. Instead, he takes part in it, accepting the conditions of our time and seemingly enjoying them.

Introduction

Ingvar Cronhammar’s works place themselves in the field between architecture, art, and design. Cronhammer’s work reveals a fascination of the industrial, and throughout the creation process the possibilities of technology are utilized to its full potential. It incites to slow paced thoughtfulness, but underneath the surface lurks an unease in the realization of recognizing something one has never before seen.

In 2001 Cronhammer build one of his most significant and important public art installations, ELIA, that has become a landmark for the area of Herning, Denmark. The massive art installations towering up, both in physical terms and by virtue of its artistic scale.

Introduction

Gardar Eide Einarsson works with the notion of sub cultures and how to access these environments. He addresses this subject matter through diverse media as installations, paintings, sculptures etc. The notion of subversion and the undermining of the establishment is present, yet without being an aspiration of the artist, this obviously point to the classical notion of the artist’s position in society. All his works relate to the anti institutional and to the interference of concepts of freedom and the structures and organizations in society. 

Introduction

Introduction

The Danish artist FOS' (Thomas Poulsen, b. 1971) artistic practice is diverse and moves through many genres and materials. It encompasses, in the broadest sense, sculpture, installation, music, architecture, and design. FOS' works explore how the language of objects and space define us as social beings.

FOS is generally interested in how art can function as an alternative to the systems that normally regulate our behaviour in our civil societies. His art often resides in social spaces, which enables new possibilities of sociality to arise – FOS hereby connects art, design and architecture in a hybridform, which he calls ’Social Design’.

Introduction

Paul Fägerskiöldʼs paintings can be seen as an ongoing attempt to build up a lexicon of visual language. He employs elements from moments in the history of painting as much as symbols and signs from visual culture outside the discourse of painting from sources both “high” and “low”.

In his practice Fägerskiöld explores how meaning is created via language, how it can be generated in pictorial space, and how perception functions. There are no figures in the paintings which are instead dependent on the presence of an observer as co-creator of meaning, whether via thought or movement.

Fägerskiöld's work examines the ambivalence that exists between image, painting, idea, and material. There is only one subject in each of his paintings. Relationships do not exist within the paintings themselves but are generated between the surface, the image and the viewer.

Introduction

"The word ‘photography’ derives from the Greek phos, meaning light, and graphō which translates as writing, drawing or painting. If we look at the meaning of the word photography, we understand how crucial the question of light and the experience of colour is for photography, and also how it can lead to painting and to expressing oneself in colour. Photography is, in other words, painting with light. The paintings in the new series may seem a far cry from earlier, technically accomplished, large-format photographs of still, bare landscapes and environments in intense colours. These photographs are part of a tradition of Straight Photography, in which the subject is rendered without manipulation. The negative may not be cropped and advanced darkroom techniques are used to achieve an aesthetic characterised by sharpness, high contrast and rich tonality. Straight Photography refers to photography that renders a subject in sharp focus in accordance with the qualities that distinguish photography from other visual expressions, not least painting. The world should be represented as it really is. This reporting quality of uncompromising objectivity and avoidance of distortion, a striving for technical objectivity in the work, is also present in Mads Gamdrup’s new work. It is not only painting in a more general sense, but also a new and ingenious method in the continuing study of how much light colour can conceivably contain."

Except from "Photography is Painting with Light. Mads Gamdrup’s New Works” 2021 by Åsa Nacking

Introduction

The artistic practise of the Danish/Norwegian artist Nils Erik Gjerdevik (1962 – 2016) consisted of painting and ceramic sculptures, as well as individual works on paper. Nils Erik Gjerdevik was well known for his non-figurative paintings that challenge all the set rules and conventions of painting as a genre. He always confronted our idea of how a painting should be presented through his use of peculiar formats, alternative colours and composition rarely built around the classical notion of harmony. His paintings tend toward a more double-edged expression where seemingly divergent ideas and movement meet and become one and the same image. This practice applies to his drawings and his ceramic sculpture work as well. 

Introduction

Norwegian artist Jone Kvie (b. 1971) represents a generation of contemporary artists working in the field of sculpture and installation, reflecting classical and modernist practices to address contemporary notions of sculpture

Kvie's work is inspired by and contains references to a broad range of diverse subjects including the natural sciences and nature from stalactite caves to drifting ice blocks, whirlpools, mountain landscapes and meteors.

Introduction

Since the paintings and performances of the 1980's Michael Kvium's works have focused on uncompromising descriptions of the aspects of life that we rather hide than expose to observation. In recent years Kvium's grotesque and twisted depictions of the human body are companied by beautiful landscapes and animal motives. Death acts as a constant presence in Kvium's works, reminding us of the paradoxical consequence of conception. Michael Kvium's painterly stagings contain associations to a theatre stage.

Introduction

Runo Lagomarsino (b.1977, Sweden) develops works that presents a critical vision on the construction of history-based themes or analyses connections between modernism and current geopolitics. Lagomarsino’s work present a well-defined political position, posses an unfinished and fragmented aspect, and act as provocative and open reflections on relations of territory and exclusion.

Introduction

Lea Porsager (b. 1981) graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, and the Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main, in 2010. She began her studies as a PhD candidate at Malmö Art Academy and Lund University in September 2015. Porsager’s practice interweaves fabulation and speculation with a variety of mediums, including film, sculpture, photography, and text. Her works encompass science, politics, feminism, and esotericism.

Porsager’s recent solo exhibitions include Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, 2021; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 2020-21; FuturDome, Milano, 2020; Museum of Contemporary Art, Roskilde, 2019; Nils Stærk, Copenhagen, 2016; Brandts, Odense, 2016; Göttingen Kunstverein, 2015; Overgaden, Copenhagen, 2015; Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, 2015; Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden, 2013; and Emily Harvey Foundation, New York, 2013. Group exhibitions include National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan, 2020; CCCB, Barcelona, 2019; iMAL, Bruxelles, 2019; SMK – National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen, 2017; Rebuild Foundation, Chicago, 2016; Den Frie, Copenhagen, 2016, 2014; Monash University Museum of Art | MUMA, Melbourne, 2015; Moderna Museet, Malmö, 2014; KUMU Art Museum, Tallinn, 2014; Sorø Kunstmuseum, 2014; Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, 2013; and Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst, Berlin, 2013.

Porsager was selected as a CERN Honorary Mention for the Collide International Award in 2018. In 2012, Porsager participated in dOCUMENTA (13) with Anatta Experiment. She was awarded the Carl Nielsen and Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen Scholarship in 2014. In 2015, Porsager partook in the 14th Istanbul Biennial: SALTWATER: A Theory of Thought Forms as Annie Besant’s “medium,” recreating thirty-six of Besant’s watercolours from the book Thought-Forms: A Record of Clairvoyant Investigation (1905). Porsager’s earthwork and memorial Gravitational Ripples was inaugurated in June 2018 in Stockholm, Sweden, commemorating the Swedish lives lost in the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia. She is represented by Nils Stærk Gallery, Copenhagen.

Introduction

Matthew Ronay's sculptural works are like mythological visions that embrace the mystical and strange without loosing the ability to impact the viewer on a fundamentally human level. Ronay works with humble materials such as wood, papier mâché and fabric and sets forth oppositions such as male/female; life/death; light/darkness; and reality/unreality. Both formally and as regards to content Ronay's artistic universe is informed by the spirituality and design of some non-western cultures as well as the cosmology of science fiction.

Introduction

Torbjørn Rødland's photographs are produced through film-based cameras and chemical processing. His self-aware and often uncanny photographs, films, and books are saturated with symbolism, lyricism, and eroticism. They take on existing visual forms and genres from still lives to portraits to landscapes, but without the research tone of first-wave conceptual art or the ironic commentary of the subsequent Pictures Generation. Attempts to seize and to integrate truth, rather than to deconstruct it, accompany Rødland's inclination to delve into problematic aspects of contemporary photography and the history of art. He probes popular visual languages in search of both spiritual and perverse qualities, so as to prolong our engagement with the single and the moving image.

Introduction

Since the 1970s Tom Sandberg has worked continuously with the black and white photograph in an uncompromising, poetic and seductive manner. With a diverse subject matter that includes classical studies of the female body, natural objects, land-scapes, people on the street, cloud formations, airplanes, cars and much more, Sandberg consequently masters to infuse his pictures with a strong sense of intensity and personal presence.

Tom Sandberg explores the photograph as a language and he generally works with his subjects abstractly as well as formally and sculpturally.

Introduction

Danish artist Tove Storch's (b. 1981) artistic project can be viewed as a continuous investigation of sculptural possibilities. Her works challenges the viewer’s perception of space and reality and ask questions to what sculpture is and what it’s able to do. In a combination of a tight minimal expression and delicate, fragile materials her works give physical shape to complex reflections on form, time and space.

Introduction

Introduction

As former pro skateboarding prodigy Templeton refine the future of the sport through the 80s and the 90s, where he turned pro. Templeton’s early skate fame gave him a forum to discuss issues like racism and homophobia that weren’t getting much play among the Thrasher set. It also gave him free reign to lead skateboarding away from the halfpipe and into the terrain of the real world, though he’s predictably modest about his pioneering role.

By the mid-90s Templeton had turned into a businessman and an artist, a kind of unwitting archetype for a new Renaissance man of street culture. Templeton began experimenting with photography in 1995, once again finding himself on the vanguard of a new cutting edge: the mix of social documentary and personal expression.

Introduction

Eduardo Terrazas (1936) is a Mexican creator who has taken genuine interest in studying and contemplating the complexity of our contemporary world. Spirit, beauty, order, and technique are the cornerstones that define his visual universe.

Architect by training, he obtain his Bachelor’s degree at UNAM Mexico, and then a Master’s, at Cornell University, New York. But his endeavors –for over fifty years- include an array of disciplines: design, architecture, urban and regional planning, visual arts and environmental issues, responding and reflecting creatively to our changing reality, proposing alternate methods of inhabiting our world, different forms to relate one another, new ways to portray and understand our cosmos.

Terrazas sees his transit through these disciplines, as different pathways that nevertheless run parallel, as resources to approach concerns that range from philosophy to science. 

He is one of the few Mexicans who work with the geometric abstraction to establish a dialogue between the formal occidental aesthetics and the indigenous crafts techniques. 

Introduction

The Transylvanian-born Germany based artists, Gert & Uwe Tobias are collaborators and identical twins. The Tobias brothers paint, sculpt, draw with a typewriter and make large scale woodcuts. Their renewed and colourful take on traditional medias such as ceramics and woodcuts form the body of their work together with an almost nostalgic approach to making art, as each work is handmade by both sets of artists hands. In their exhibitions, the Tobias brothers often combine these media; the almost animalistic ceramics and large-scale woodcuts together – all of which display lush, vivid colour and strong graphic compositions. Drawing on sources as diverse as popular culture, traditional Eastern European folk art and art historical movements such as constructivism, the Tobias brothers create artworks that are both playful and haunting.