ALL EXHIBITIONS

Kathrine Ærtebjerg / Philip Grözinger

Her Stomach is an Oven that Burns the World / Einen Intensiven Moment

23.03 – 12.05.2012

For this exhibition Danish artist Kathrine Ærtebjerg (*1969) has created new colorful and imaginative paintings that each unfold reflexions on transformation as a fundamental human condition. She focus on the idea of the body being a landscape in itself.

Ærtebjerg’s paintings depict undefinable states of transition. They are played out in the borderland between conciousness and unconciousness. Usually a female figure is placed in a more or less recognizable universe consisting of dramatic mountain scenery, insect-like human figures, gigantic fantasy flowers and patchwork carpets overgrown with mushrooms. It is an ambiguous universe that is neither defined as recognizable everyday realism nor as unreal conceptions of the imagination. The landscapes deal with the notion of metamorphosis: the external circumstances and inner mental relationships cross, merge and are displaced into each other.

 

The paintings by the Berlin based artist Philip Grözinger (*1972) appear sinister in their depiction of lonely places – an ocean, an abandoned house, a ladder to nowhere. The sense of solitude is counteracted by smiling figures appearing like lovely little monsters, who at first sight seem to radiate confidence, but who at second glance appear rather sad or miserable. In Grözinger’s works possible idyllic places and landscapes are made into dark spaces, which might have an unpleasant atmosphere, but which also seem to offer a refuge of dark humor from an eventual oppressing idyll.