Galerie Mikael Andersen would like to welcome you to the opening of the exhibition Neighbors with new works by Eske Kath, Friday the 14th August 2015, 3-7 pm.  Eske Kath’s point of departure in Neighbors is our relationship to our surroundings, nature and each other; human’s (futile) attempt to control the world around us. Are we nature and each other’s ‘neighbor’, or do we consider ourselves a part of nature, part of a collective organism? The contrast between these intangible questions and the clear control that is present in the work’s production creates a tension in the exhibition.

The paintings in Neighbors show landscapes that seem abandoned by humans. In place of humans there are simple, man made structures merged together with nature, sunk down in the sand or left as open areas in the painting process, revealing the raw unprimed surface that is the starting point for the works.

Eske Kath has opened up his paintings so the different types of canvas lie in the back of the image and together with the sketched out composition come together to create the foreground, middleground and background in the finished landscape. In other paintings, painted on black canvas with blurred chalk compositions, small lonely houses in a seemingly infinite void. We are alone, yet together, circling in each other’s gravitational fields; we are neighbors in our shared loneliness.

Houses act, like in many of Kath’s work as a substitute for the individual. Torn out of it’s foundations, floating in an endless void or perhaps on it’s way to establish new foundations elsewhere.

Eske Kath (b. 1975) studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Art (1997-2003). He lives and works in New York, USA. Kath has exhibition in many countries throughout Europe as well as New York and Los Angeles, USA. 

Photo credits: Jan Søndergaard