Morten Tillitz
& Steinunn Helga Sigurdardottir
+
Anna Bennike and William Anthony
Maniacal laughter 2
Stalke Galleri
Kirke Sonnerup
11.10 to 28.11.2003
Morten Tillitz and Steinnun Helga Sigurðardóttir
Joint Project at Galleri Kirke Sonnerup
Morten Tillitz was born in 1965. He grew up in Avedøre Stationsby and Tønder and was educated at the Jyske Kunstakademi (Jutland Art Academy) and at the Kunstakademie in Kiel, Germany.
Tillitz’s works consisted of plaster, paper, and watercolor. He used plaster panels, a material most people associated with construction. He created new, quirky, strange spaces, platforms, or shelves into which he painted figures. The figures were depicted with a color scheme across the face, which anonymized them completely or partially, while also forming a tension of various emotional states. The contrast between the real and the representational reflected either a desire to understand, something returned to the viewer, or an illusion—perhaps an annoyance at an optical image in space, or simply an indeterminate fact that insisted on existing.
Steinnun Helga Sigurðardóttir was born in 1960. She grew up in Vík í Mýrdal in Iceland, studied at the Kunstakademiet in Iceland, and at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf under Jannis Kounellis. Steinnun had lived and worked in Denmark since 1993.
Steinnun worked with drawings and sculptures. Her new works marked a departure from her earlier practice, which had focused on minimalist installations exploring time and social aspects. Her new works emerged from the figurative, colorful, spiritual, and feminine, but also addressed the circumstances of the creative process. Her works were not delicate, feminine, or sweet—on the contrary, they were too much. There was a consistent pursuit of becoming overwhelming, sugary, and demanding—pushing the viewer to the edge of endurance or claustrophobia. But when observed long enough, a duality in their character emerged, and one surrendered. The innocent and the romantic, as well as the enigmatic and the spiritual, were brought to life.
Tillitz and Steinnun had collaborated in various contexts, including organizing Camp Lejre in 2001. They titled their exhibition at Kirke Sonnerup no.1.
Maniacal Laughter 2 – “Conversations in Lines”
Galleri Kirke Sonnerup was pleased to present an exhibition featuring works by William Anthony and Anne Bennike.
Following the exhibition Maniacal Laughter in Kambur, Iceland, in 2002, Anthony (USA, b. 1930) and Bennike (DK, b. 1974) collaborated to create a series of drawings in which their artistic lines met and intertwined, producing new, surprising works. Their distinctly different yet related styles complemented each other across differences in age and artistic background.
Through correspondence, drawings were sent back and forth across the Atlantic, where William and Anne created joint works in which their motifs interacted in an almost symbiotic relationship. Anne Bennike described their collaboration as follows:
“When Bill and I drew together, it was as if our communication was complete—we battled, dove beneath the surface into another language, and tossed the ball back and forth in letters between the USA and Denmark.”
As a supplement to this collaboration, they also exhibited individual, separate drawings.
William Anthony’s style was a fragile and naïve form akin to a boy’s drawing, executed with an adult’s intelligence, often infused with humor and references to other art. William Anthony had been featured in Andy Warhol’s magazines. His line was both precise and uncertain, subtly distinctive—a style he had practiced for 40 years.
Anne Bennike had traveled extensively in Europe, Russia, the USA, and Africa, exploring themes from both the mainstream and the fringe of the art world. She worked with themes of the unspoken and the overlooked. Bodily and dreamlike motifs wove through her works, balancing the boundary between reality and unreality.
The two artists shared a common interest in drawing and its expression, playing with the childlike and the mature. Their first collaboration in Iceland developed into a friendship, inspiring them to share with a Danish audience what emerged from this unusual meeting. For both artists, the collaboration marked a shift in their artistic focus: for William as an experienced, established artist, and for Anne as a young artist in the early stages of her artistic career.
The exhibition was shown at Stalke Galleri’s new venue in Kirke Sonnerup, which was regarded as an excellent initiative to introduce contemporary art in beautiful rural surroundings—a contrast to the pace of urban life. It was therefore considered the perfect setting for Maniacal Laughter 2.
Maniacal Laughter was developed by Gunnar Ørn and Sam Jedig.
Morten Tillitz and Steinunn Helga Sigurdardóttir
Back gallery
A Daily Newspaper Wrote About the Exhibition
In connection with the exhibition at Galleri Kirke Sonnerup, a Danish daily newspaper described the encounter between four artists as a nuanced interplay between sweetness and fragmentation, intimacy and investigation. The exhibition brought together works by Anne Bennike, William Anthony, Steinunn Helga Sigurðardóttir, and Morten Tillitz, presenting a dialogue across generations, materials, and artistic temperaments.
Anne Bennike’s drawings were noted for their immediate, almost fragile expression, where playfulness and dreamlike imagery coexist with more complex emotional layers. Her works opened up the space and invited the viewer into a visual universe that balances innocence with subtle unease.
William Anthony’s contribution was described as marked by his distinctive line, which appears both simple and deeply experienced. His work contains humor as well as gravity, creating a particular tension in its encounter with Bennike’s drawings, where differences in age and experience become a strength rather than a contrast.
Steinunn Helga Sigurðardóttir’s works were characterized as physically and emotionally present. Her use of figuration and material results in works that do not seek the pretty or decorative, but instead insist on an intensity that challenges the viewer’s endurance and attention. Over time, the works reveal themselves and disclose an underlying poetry and human warmth.
Morten Tillitz’s works were highlighted for their tension between the recognizable and the alienated. Working with plaster, paper, and color, he creates spatial images in which figures appear both present and anonymized. His works revolve around the human condition without fixing meaning, leaving space for interpretation.
Taken as a whole, the newspaper described the exhibition as a meeting of different artistic voices that, precisely through their differences, form a coherent whole. The exhibition was praised for allowing the personal, the intuitive, and the investigative to stand side by side, demonstrating how dialogue and collaboration can function as a driving force in contemporary art.
William Anthony and Anne Bennike
Front gallery
