Tag: Benny Dröscher
Winter Show 2012 @ Charlotte Fogh
Benny Dröscher – Still Undreamed-of
“GRAND opening” @ Charlotte Fogh
PERSONAL MATTERS @ Charlotte Fogh
Undefined borders for unlimited perceptions
The group show includes the participation of 13 artists, almost all of them already in close relationship with the gallery, who were invited to challenge the title of the show in an ambitious attempt to disclose one of the most interesting moments of the creation process, each one through his/her personal research.
A reality where there are not boundaries, limits and rules is not credible; a reality where space, time and actions are not defined within schemes that are often strict and definite.
Because of external commands or personal considerations, we keep on imposing more and more interfering rules which create new boundaries and limit our thoughts.
Nevertheless, many of these limits are not that clear and that evident, but they result from our belonging to groups, cultures, traditions which – although they are reliable – hide the potentials and benefits of different points of view.
The artist, more than any other people, when carrying out creation processes, goes beyond the physical and psychological barriers, setting minds free and open to different perceptions.
Each invited artist has interpreted the title of the show by proposing one or more works, many of which have been created purposely for the show:
Simon Boudvin (FR) presents Auteurs, a project made of 8 snapshots taken in the streets and places of Paris where there are the statues of famous writers and sculptors: Bernard Palissy, Pierre de Ronsard, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, Dante Alighieri, Georges Jacques Danton, Denis Diderot, Michel Eyquem de Montaigne. The artist, climbing on the statues, took pictures at the height of their eyes, by showing their point of view.
Davide Cantoni (IT) went beyond the boundaries of the Earth with Galaxy M31, a large format artwork created purposely for this exhibition with his famous technique of the burned drawing made with magnifying glass and sun on paper.
Vittorio Corsini (IT) created Ready, a big carpet of sawdust and pigments reproducing the 4 flags of Papua-New Guinea, South Africa, Sweden and Mongolia. During the exhibition, it will be possible to mix the colors of the flags by walking on the artwork.
Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain (BR) got inspired by the studies carried out by Nathaniel Bowditch in 1802 about the relationship between the letters of the alphabet and time zones, still used in navigation, to create A given time in a given place (Zulu time), a large wall drawing where a new map of the world is reproduced, showing the time zones with the cartographic and linguistic meanings.
Nina Saunders (DK) for the first time at the gallery, presents Haute Cuture, an art work purposely created for the exhibition, where starting from the cushion of a Chesterfield armchair, skillfully reshaped, and apparently ever changing, you guess a stuffed fox wearing a coyote mask.
Sarah Ciracì (IT )proposes La X Dimensione, lighting box with intermittent light able to hypnotize visitors’ eyes and take them to new dimension.
Berend Strik (NL) presents two new artworks created in New York, Orbs and Identity and Made in Brooklyn, where the embroidery and the fabrics hide and change the photographic basis on which they are applied.
Gian Paolo Striano (IT) has purposely created for the exhibition Domestic Hearth, an artwork made of lacquered wood, cathode tube and led, which investigates on the more and more undefined borders between art and design.
Simon Keenleyside (UK) presents the large painting on canvas Somebody calling from the other side, in the middle of which there is a large frontier tower, and two small paintings Take me back to that other shore and Curse the dark, where a boundary wall cuts into two the magical world of the artist, the landscape of Essex.
Benny Dröscher (DK) has painted two canvas were, as usual in his artworks, the perception of the absence of boundaries completely fills the artwork. On the intense sky blue of the canvas, symbolic elements of nature and abstract elements are painted in harmony, creating an image that goes beyond the canvas by invading the view of the visitor completely, so that canvas seem to be painted without a fixed direction, but they can be observed from any point of view.
Julien Berthier (FR) proposes the artwork Hypnos. Five stuffed pigeons, pulled down in anthropomorphic posture, wear fiberglass masks which represent Hypnos, the God of Sleep in Greek mythology. Courtesy of the artwork Galerie GP & N Vallois, Paris.
Seulgi Lee (Korea) presents a re-interpretation of Don Quixote, a grey wooden cube on the top of which there are multicolor hairy skewers.
Adam Cvijanovic (USA) presents two new artworks both made through the flash and latex on Tyvek paper technique. One shows the ocean and the other one shows a wonderful and rich abandoned villa with a refined design.
THINGS THAT MATTER A LOT
It’s not only a matter of what the matter is.
It’s a matter of what is most important. (Translated from Danish)
This is how you could translate Things That Matter A Lot at Galleri Christoffer Egelund, where the artist Trine Boesen, in cooperation with the gallery, has invited the artists Benny Dröscher, John Kørner, Nina Saunders and Theis Wendt to exhibit, under the above-mentioned title.
What matters? Do all things matter equally? We are not always able to see what matters. Art matters, and art is about something that matters. Art works by showing us what we hadn’t expected to see. Ghosts, for instance. Or chaos and revolt in our everyday lives. When art matters, we are genuinely surprised. It’s compact. Or it’s airy, like a vision when we’re blinded.
This is what these five artists work with – and now you can see the result at Galleri Christoffer Egelund. The well-known and well-regulated has gone astray. When the artists show landscapes, cities, human beings or furniture, these do not look the way we’re used to. The smooth illusion of reality has vanished. The title refers to artists whose works make a contribution to the social debate and/or are surrealistic reflections of the surrounding world. Expect equal shares of chaos and artfulness with an edge.
Trine Boesen says:
“We have invited Dröscher, Kørner, Saunders and Wendt because between them they generate a good feeling of both rapture and challenge. They work with things that matter … things that matter a lot. The title is also a comment on the current time of crisis. Art is important, not just money. It’s food for the soul. The artists of the exhibition cover a wide range, so their point of departure, materials and methods, are manifold, and the contributions by the individual artists are mutually reinforcing.
Trine Boesen has painted an entire wall and hung paintings of ghosts on it against a background with a big, black star and bubbles that rise like in sparkling water. Benny Dröscher shows dream-like pictures and intricate sculptures, amongst these a floating suspended sculpture, which may include haloes, glitter, flying objects and a spruce. The artist reaches far. John Kørner, who is known for mixing landscape, pure fantasy and magic realism, shows a great painting from the series of dead soldiers. The title of the painting is Dan. Expect the best and you won’t get disappointed. Nina Saunders creates pure-style white upholstery and impresses us this time with four unheimliche furniture sculptures that have swallowed stuffed animals. Theis Wendt, who is also known for his spatial installations, excels in large-format paper works in a class by themselves. Feel free to study the details.
The AGENCY
Benny Dröscher
Let Us Suppose, Then, That We are Dreaming
14 Oct – 14 Nov 09
Preview 13th Oct. & Private Reception 15th Oct., both 6-9pm
S.T.O.R.A.G.E
Richard Webb
Terror Management Theory
The Agency is pleased to present new paintings and sculptures by Danish artist Benny Droscher. The new paintings are a continuation of his past dalliances with abstraction and surrealism. The works juxtapose surface and depth, the graphic and the authentic mark all within zero gravity space. Weightlessness is an important issue for the sculptor turned painter Droscher. His sculptures have the appearance of solidity when in fact they turn out to be props, holes within cloth or grooves in foam. Droscher’s canvases are physically heavier than his sculptures, yet the chromatics and arrangement of the motifs are all intended to suggest weightlessness, floating and chaos. This suggestion works despite the fact that the paintings are arranged according to the classical laws of central perspective. On first glance Droscher’s works are of ageless beauty, on second glance they become harder to read. They are composites of ciphers, part Twombly, part pastoral quotation and symbols, which possibly resonate zen practice. It is beside the point whether any of the symbols can be read how they might have been intended, as they are presented at the point of dissolution. Rather than this being a Negative, in Droscher’s work it is a Positive, the point of separation from meaning is about the liberation or the drawing of breath from being literal, literary or pictorial. The centre of the work is usually a void, which might be read as a point of transparency or a portal.
One could argue that Droscher’s paintings are inverse, rather than emanating light to the outside they suck light from within, making them radiate in turn. In order to quantify this radiation the occasional mark or squiggle functions both as a reminder of representation but also as a blockage or smear which directs the gaze.
Modernist abstraction, even expressionism would have had to decide between gravity or weightlessness, whereas todays’ abstraction can be figurative, void, decentralised and physically bound by gravity all at once. The shift in perception could be blamed on the advent of anime and 3d computergraphics or games culture. It appears that Droscher’s paintings are about an abstraction of the gaze in the age of digital representation. It allows them to propose an innocence, which is also informed by the knowledge of parallel worlds (within quantum physics) and constant paradigm shifts. Droscher’s works, be it paintings, sculptures or installations pose questions rather than provide answers, but contrary to his titles, they are not philosophical propositions but about physics versus the poetry of perception.
Benny Droscher lives and works in Denmark. He has shown extensively internationally. After his solo exhibtion at the Bergen Kunsthall, Norway last year he participated in three shows in Italy this year alone, at Blindarte Contemporanea and Mostra D’Oltremare both in Naples and the Palazzo Venezia, Rome, as well as being included in “The force of the Romanticism”, Malmö Konstmuseum, Sweden. He was profiled by Martin Herbert for the September Issue of Modern Painters 2007 as well as being commisioned to do the Manifesto for Art Review July/August 2007 and Arte Critica August 2008.