Martin Bigum
Structure Beneath Skin

Wohnmaschine is pleased to announce the exhibition ‚Structure Beneath Skin’, the first soloshow in Germany by the Danish artist Martin Bigum.

The show presents large-scale paintings, wall-papers by the artist, drawings, photographs and an outside installation. The show invites to a poetic journey to grotesque and mythological vision.

Bigum is searching constantly for new inspiration throughout his environment, and sometimes the inspiration itself is the content of an artwork. Especially his photographs should be seen as evidences of moving through a fascinating world, leaving testimonies, catching the poetry of moments. ,What I can not write I must paint, and what I can not paint I must write’, as the artist says. The same can be said about what can not be photographed, well, it can be painted, and what can not be painted must be photographed.
Martin Bigum is primarily known for his comic-style paintings but also is active in poetry and writing. From the age of 15 – 22 Martin Bigum was a cartoon-artist for the Danish version of the American satirical MAD magazine. Quitting this job to pursue his own art the artist for many years did not want to be linked to neither cartoons nor MAD, but in his 42nd year of living, sees that a circle has been drawn.

Martin Bigum is born 1966 in Copenhagen, where he lives and works. Since his debut in 1990 Martin Bigum has been broadly shown in Scandinavian institutions and is collected by various Scandinavian museums, among these ARoS, Arken-Museum of Modern Art, Statens Museum for Kunst, Malmö Konstmuseum, Reykjavik Art Museum.

A 72 – pages catalogue in full color will be available from the end of January 2009, featuring all the works in the exhibition as well as poems, drawings and sketches.

The exhibition has been made possible through Peter Amby Contemporary Art Agency

Check the show out::::
V1
Urik Crone

The Approach

Vilma Gold is pleased to present a new exhibition of work by Danish artist Thomas Hylander. This will be Hylander’s first solo show in a commercial gallery in London.

For this exhibition Hylander presents a series of new paintings that seek to capture the fleeting quality of memories arising from a return journey, by the artist, to a place of his childhood. There is a quixotic character evident in the work’s ambition to recall the sense of place Hylander holds but also, conveyed in the work’s muted tones, is an awareness of the trappings of reflection. The form captured in the painting ‘Lost again in the new house’ could be interpreted as a literal framing of this idea. In this work a sense of reverie and nostalgia has been seemingly frozen in the shape of an amulet, like the lock of hair in a locket, yet even here the evanescent quality of recall seems to disallow rigidity of form to occur.

Working with acrylic on canvas Hylander has been described as using ‘painting as archaeology’. In his work paint is applied and scraped away in equal measure to create mesmerising dreamscapes of interiors and still lives. Reworking these traditional genres of painting, Hylander is able to create scenes that are briefly tangible before they blur into a sea of emotive textures and forms. There is a ghostly aura in the subdued tones and use of light in the work that induce this shift. Through Hylander’s dry use of colour the paintings are imbued with a sense of transience, as if the works are merely whispers of memories not quite fully grasped, revisited through Hylander’s delicate command of the brush. This glimmer of perceptible objects and scenes is carefully crafted through the excavation of every inch of the canvas. In submitting his canvases to this meticulous process Hylander appears to be undertaking a kind of ontological study of the environments and objects that surround us. The worn quality that the paintings possess, as a result of this prolonged investigation, is seemingly at odds with the fragility of the imagery depicted and yet, somehow it strengthens the work’s ability to suggest that memory is not fixed but instead it can change through the abstraction of its retelling.

Thomas Hylander was born in Denmark in 1970 and moved to the UK in 1997 after a period as a guest student at the Academy of Fine Art in Warsaw, Poland. In 2004 he graduated from the Royal College of Art with a MA in Fine Art. Hylander participated in Bloomberg New Contemporaries as part of the Liverpool Biennale that toured to the Barbican in 2004-5, London and also participated in ARTfutures in 2005. In 2007 he had a solo show at Henningsen Contemporary at Green Square, Copenhagen and is currently participating in a group show at Karyn Lovegrove Gallery, Los Angeles. He lives and works in London.

Vilma Gold

Morten Schelde

– WISH YOU A VERY HAPPY 2009!!!

From
Julie Nord

NEW HOMEPAGE:

Julie Nord

Rehnberg paints in oils on sand-blasted acrylic
sheeting. He squeezes the paint on a wide putty
knife leaving the colours unmixed at this stage.
Then he goes on to paint in an unbroken movement,
either vertical or horizontal, creating a single
gesture with all its properties leaving their
mark on the painting. This action is one of
internal contradiction, wavering at the
borderline of control and unintentionality. After
this the painting cannot be altered or corrected.
It can only be accepted or rejected.

Rehnberg is a widely read and erudite man. His
works can proceed from or be spurred by the
philosophy of Plotinus, a painting by Caspar
David Friedrich or Titian, a novel by Henry James
or the writings of Hölderlin. Thought and the
selection of the “theme” precede the act of
painting and set its mood. The appearance of the
painting is a synthesis of experience, skill and
feeling, and things that are not completely under
the artist’s control, ones that simply happen.

Håkan Rehnberg’s paintings are wonderful. The eye
is allowed to wander in their multi-based
networks of rich, breathing colour, even
endlessly. To focus on different heights and
parts, to enjoy their tensions, calm breathing,
joy and anxiety, ultimately released as beauty.

Håkan Rehnberg is one of Sweden’s most highly
esteemed and successful artists. A member of the
Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts since 2000, he
has held a large number of exhibitions in Sweden
and elsewhere in Europe. His works are included
in many public and private collections both in
Sweden and abroad. Rehnberg’s works were last
seen in Finland at Galerie Artek in 1995.

Anhava


UNCANNY TALES at Galleri Tom Christoffersen is James Jessop’s (UK/1974) first solo exhibition in Denmark. Featuring Jessop’s latest spoof-horror-b-movie/pulp-fiction-disturbing strangeness, Uncanny Tales continues his series of relentless large-scale epic painterly adventures.

The exhibition represents two tracks of the artist’s production. The first deals with power games embodied in femmes fatales depicted in decadent yet glamorous settings, where sex and violent fantasies seems to be the issues. The paintings are simply visual cocktails, which could match any cover on pulp literature such as ‘true crime detective magazines”, so popular from the 1920ties to the 80ties. The other track shown relates to uncensored, dark sided comics putting forth terrifying scenes as vampire fights mummies and zombies rise from death – a track which is just as intriguing and camp as the seducing retro-crimes.

The artist’s trademark “Horrific” style burst onto the London art scene with impact at Charles Saatchi’s infamous ‘New Blood’ exhibition at The Saatchi Gallery London 2004. But long before entering the establishment – already at aged eleven – Jessop bagan his artistic adventures spraying Hip Hop style graffiti, and today is a highly respected and wel-known street tagger in London.

With a strange story to tell and an approach to the media departing both from graffiti and from the Royal College of Art James Jessop’s direct, dense and dynamic works demonstrate an energy seldom found in contemporary painting.

James Jessop (1974) lives and works in London. He graduated from the Royal College of Art London in 1999. On the 24th October 2008 he founded the “Graffatarian”, an approach to life based on 1970’s New York Subway graffiti writing values. Previous solo exhibitions have been shown at Galeria Thomas Cohn Sao Paulo, Sartorial Contemporary Art London, Rockwell London and This Way Up Gallery London. Jessop has featured in group exhibitions in Copenhagen, Berlin, New York, Melbourne, Bratislava and Sweden. In 2008 Jessop curated Burning Candy at Leeds College of Art and Design, which toured to Sartorial Contemporary Art London. The show presented three of England’s finest graffiti writers Cyclops, Sweet Toof and Tek33(Jessop).

Sartorialart
Tom Christoffersen

Swingtime: Freestyle

Tracey Emin (GB), Adrian Piper (US), Assume Vivid Astro Focus (Nomad), Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen, Anders Brinch, Jesper Just, Peter Land, Sonja Lillebæk Christensen, Jeannette Ehlers, Jette Ellgaard, Charlotte Bergmann Johansen, Peter Bonde, Morten Nilsson, Marie Plum, , Nikolaj Recke, Camilla Thorup (DK)

Charlotte Bergmann Johansen will do the performance “Karen & Mette” at 18.30 hours

Curated by Jeanette Ehlers og Camilla Thorup.

Charlotte Fogh

Li Wei
On January 15 MOGADISHNI proudly presents the first solo exhibition ever in Denmark by Chinese artist Li Wei (b. 1970). Li Wei will be presenting his famous and intriguing Photographs.

Mogadishni