Gestures or Thoughts

Sculptures to Reflect On

HENRIK B. ANDERSEN: Ostranenie, Galleri Stalke, Vesterbrogade 15. The exhibition is open Tuesday-Friday 12:00-17:30, Saturday 11:00-15:00. Until May 30.

An exhibition with only two sculptures requires quite a bit from both the artist and the audience. The artist channels all their energy into a narrow focus, and the audience cannot simply rush from piece to piece.

Henrik B. Andersen's sculptures are deceptively simple in form but difficult to uncover in terms of deeper meaning. However, one finds a key to them by alternately viewing them up close and from a distance. Up close, their "corporeal" presence becomes vivid and enticingly elusive. Seen from many steps away, they are closed-off yet, strangely enough, comprehensible. Henrik B. Andersen explores seeing things for the first time or making the familiar seem strange.

The animal-like figure, which stands upright and yet sits firmly on its heavy base, harmonizes with the dominant base in a dynamic interplay between the familiar motif and a profound connection to cosmic dimensions. With this exhibition, great cosmological questions are brought to the surface.

Henrik B. Andersen's next project will revolve around the experience of the human body. It is a project one can look forward to with great interest.

Eva Pohl

Mysteries in Plaster

Henrik B. Andersen exhibits two new works

“Ostranenie,” Galleri Stalke, Vesterbrogade 15. Tuesday-Friday 12-5:30 pm, Saturday 11 am-3 pm. Until May 30.

Two sculptures in one long room are not enough for many. And then, on top of that, it's only Henrik B. Andersen’s second solo exhibition since 1984. He is one of the few non-students of Professor Hein Heinsen, despite being relatively young (he just turned 31). Despite his modest output, his significant works have already earned him a solid platform among the many intellectual artistic contributions of the 1980s.

His latest contributions once again play into the mysteries of the times. One of the sculptures is a large antelope, which is sunken into a block, with its legs also dissolved into half-circles and an added short side. The other work consists of an enormous and heavy black globe that presses against a smaller, red globe. These two works communicate with each other across the room and maintain a certain enigmatic mystery in their environment.

The mysteriousness in this illogical combination is no accidental side effect. Rather, it’s a strategy. This is also suggested by the title of the exhibition, which further emphasizes the notion of contemplating an obscure Russian thinker. “Ostranenie” translates roughly to “making the familiar strange.” You feel that there must be a connection between this and the numerous examples from Shklovsky’s writings about defamiliarization—a method to awaken the imagination and thought, as Stalke explains.

But at the same time, how much does this intentional mystery resonate with the postmodern sculpture? If we don’t understand the title, does that mean we also don’t understand the mystery? Is the incomprehensibility part of what fascinates us?

Because it’s a plaster sculpture—before it’s later cast in bronze—it becomes a more tactile form that, in a way, combines simplicity with complexity.

Henrik B. Andersen’s overall artistic ambition doesn’t lie in offering a world of answers. On the contrary, his art aims to hold onto and explore the unanswered. Existence itself, as a phenomenon, comes to light, for instance, in the long title “Astrofabel II” from 1986, which also features in “Ostranenie.”

The common thread in this seemingly impenetrable logic lies in a series of rationality-shifting clues. For many people, Henrik B. Andersen will primarily be associated with his large sculptures titled “Ostranenie” and “Mu,” as a mysterious and consistent body of work.

PETER M. HORNUNG / Politiken 18.5.1989

Silent Observers

Henrik B. Andersen, "Galleri Stalke," Vesterbrogade 15, Copenhagen V. Until May 30.
Øivind Nygård, "Galleri Gari," Sjælsøgade 10, Copenhagen S. Until May 10.

In connection with Henrik B. Andersen's exhibition at Galleri Stalke and Øivind Nygård's at Galleri Gari in Copenhagen, one could venture to say that something is happening in the field of minimalist sculpture.

The air is thick with paradoxical and unusual connections, and one should not expect anything other than a confrontation with pure artistic works.

What these exhibitions have in common is an extremely limited number of works — two in total — and what they also share is a thorough simplicity in form and content

.

Henrik B. Andersen's "Mu" (meaning "emptiness" in Japanese) consists of a gazelle-like animal that has sunk halfway into the ground or is stuck on a podium made of cassette-shaped pieces, from which two semicircular bars stick out. Thus, a natural scene is hinted at, but in an abstracted, almost absurd way. The scene exudes an uncanny connection. The tension inherent in the work sustains it.

Øivind Nygård's "The Observer" consists of a stepped tray in a massive format, atop which lies a man's shoe, left behind, alongside a pair of binoculars. Here, too, the angular nature of the work contrasts with the soft, natural appearance of the shoe, which in several places shows signs of wear. Both works are executed with a strictly aesthetic surface treatment: respectively painted gypsum, which adds structure, and metallic-painted polyurethane. This consistency helps emphasize anonymity as one observes the works. Things are clearly taken out of their "proper" context and no longer belong to anything.

It becomes clear that distance plays a significant role for these works. Despite their striking forms, they do not lead to any tangible resolution that can be grasped through logic.

Both artists, in different ways, work with this physical absence, this reluctance to let the viewer "enter" the work. Central to both is the concept of "distance" as a necessary foundation for distinguishing between the accidental and the definitive.

Art does not belong to an accidental world; it is not trivial and does not provide immediate answers when one approaches it. It may seem intimidating and threatening, but Øivind Nygård here appears as a witness to art — a position outside the world, but not from it.

Silent and contemplative, the works observe the viewer, and one realizes that they are made of flesh and blood, from life and wholly unshaped existence — terrifying in their understated and uncanny presence. Perhaps this is exactly what makes them vital: that the silent interaction replaces the chatter of contemporary art, where one often feels squeezed by the mental and physical strain of the works. These pieces, in their simple togetherness, witness to art itself. One does not go to art for entertainment but to gain a greater insight, which requires dedication and patience.

By Anders Kold

Morgenavisen Jyllandsposten 25.5.1989

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