Bendixen contemporary art is pleased to announce and exhibition of new work by Danish artist Torben Ribe. In his first solo exhibition at the gallery, Ribe will present paintings along with a selection of sculpture works. Though Ribe’s point of departure often lies in popular culture and art history, Ribe nonetheless effectively empties this content into either an abstract or concrete artistic sphere by playing with and teasing his visual material. Formal and experimental curiosity goes hand in hand with a sneering and subtle irony, Dadaistic humor, and an absurd use of materials, as in his constructivist versions of traditional Danish salamis and giant slices of moldy bread. In ‘Pimp my Horizon’, Ribe melds image and consumption, therein vociferously revealing an existential problematic of a portrait of one’s own self-consumption. The viewer becomes tantamount to a piece of salami with an expiration date, and in so doing becomes aware of the very boundaries of consumption. Ribe clearly acknowledges that good art necessarily borders on bad taste, as it is precisely within the realm of bad taste that we become conscious of our own patterns of consumption. His trademark satirical style can be seen on this exhibition’s invitation, which exposes a nearly nude Torben Ribe (albeit in a cowboy hat) posing in a magnificent landscape with a view over the lake that is home to the American Land Art master Robert Smithson’s most famous work, Spiral Jetty. Torben Ribe is a recent graduate of the Royal Danish Academy of Art. His work was recently shown at Roskilde’s Museet for Samtidskunst, Gammel Strand and Galleri Nicolai Wallner in Copenhagen. His work will also be featured in the exhibition “Exportable Goods – contemporary Danish art from Denmark and abroad” at Vienna’s Krinzinger Projekte (Galerie Krinzinger, October 20 – December 20, 2006).
bendixen contemporary artCarl Jacobsens Vej 20, opg. 20, 4. sal · 2500 Valby · Denmark · tel. +45 36 16 03 25 www.bendixen-art.dk · bendixen@contemporary-art.dk Opening hours: Tuesday – Friday 12-17, Saturday 11-14