This is in every way a celebration of painting. If ever it was gone or forgotten, it’s now back. The keyword in the exhibition is diversity. The gallery spaces of Carlsberg Byens Galleri & Kunstsalon (Carlsberg City Gallery & art salon) constitutes the focal point of an impressive number of artist from different countries.
There is no battle to be won. No winner to be announced. No hierarchy to establish or re-establish. Let us instead focus on the possibilities of cross-pollination. This is an exhibition of both/and. Not an exhibition of either/or. The exhibition puts together a large number of artists, each working with painting in their own distinct manner.
Let us start by stating; abstraction is always somehow related to figuration. Visual information (in its broadest sense) is automatically and actively being processed. Which means that the things we look at – in this case paintings – are perceived through certain schemata. The marks, traces and signs in an abstract painting will undoubtedly establish a connection to previous experiences of similar marks, traces and signs. A clean and innocent modus of experience is an illusion, or at least out of sight. Things we have not seen before, or do not know how to categorise, are perceived through the prisms of things we already know and are familiar with. And that brings us back to the opening conclusion. Abstraction is somehow always related to figuration. This is not a matter of devaluing abstract painting. On the contrary, it is simply a matter of dismantling a pointless feud between abstraction and figuration. The two concepts are entangled. At least that is the argument being put forward here.
Along this line of thinking, it seems reasonable to suggest that figuration is of course also deeply related to abstraction. It is simply a matter of perspective. Move close to a figurative painting and its physical qualities become visible. Figuration will dissolve into lines, colours, shapes and the texture of the surface painted upon. Abstraction is embedded in figuration. In that sense painting is everything but static. It is a machine of transformation, bouncing back and forth between abstraction and figuration. Always in flux, never constant.
Written by: Jeppe Lentz