PRESS RELEASE

"Accounts of Fragile Conditions"
a new series of works by Thomas Bang

It is with great pleasure that Stalke Galleri opens its doors to "Accounts of Fragile Conditions," Thomas Bang’s first solo gallery exhibition in seven years. The exhibition includes a group of five new installation works as well as a series of new drawings, highlighting significant aspects of Bang’s fascinating artistic development in recent years.

The series "Accounts of Fragile Conditions" originates from the theme of “conditions of damage,” a theme Bang has previously explored in works from the 1960s and 1970s, as well as in his recent exhibition at the Sophienholm Art Museum. For Bang, there is a continuing interest in focusing on the object’s encounter with a world of turbulent change—a violent mode that has in different ways marked the object and left it in a state of damage. While this condition was previously treated with simple clarity, the layers of meaning in Bang’s recent works are increasingly complex and paradoxical.

An element that contributes to this intricate network of meaning is the narrative charge of the objects, both through their materiality and through their recurring motifs and themes. Titles, like the objects themselves, are both fabulist and enigmatic. They are formulated abstractly and pose questions, offering further inquiry while resisting closure. These fragmented narratives defy the traditional structure of a beginning, middle, and end, instead requiring an interpretive leap that challenges the viewer to engage with a more open and non-linear causality.

The damaged objects in this series can be seen as a kind of “navigational apparatus.” Some resemble familiar objects like barriers or traps, yet all have an alien and unsettling character. There is a deliberate ambiguity in the functionality or lack thereof, rejecting traditional ideas of the object as merely instrumental. Bang's exploration recontextualizes the classical logic of instruments, proposing that the object becomes less a means to a functional end and more a vehicle for opening an imaginative world where functionality exists in a state of permanent potential for transformation.

In summary, "Accounts of Fragile Conditions" marks Thomas Bang’s unique position within the framework of contemporary three-dimensional art.

An illustrated catalog with text by Jacob Lillemose accompanies the exhibition.

Odd Stories

Visual artist Thomas Bang, who just turned 65, is presenting his first gallery exhibition in seven years: a collection of surreal sculptures that tell peculiar stories.

Sculpture

Thomas Bang: "Stories of Fragile States."
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"Stories of Fragile States" is a great exhibition title. At the same time, it is a title that, in its own somewhat cryptic way, guides the viewer into the exhibition. It is an exhibition featuring new sculptures and drawings by visual artist Thomas Bang at the Stalke Gallery. As the exhibition title suggests, the works are narrative, but the meaning is only temporary and, by their fragility, might fall apart. There's an element of uncertainty or perhaps even deliberate instability at play here, emphasized by the works' unmistakable surrealism.

A direct reference to historical surrealism can perhaps be seen in the sculpture "Trap", where a spear made of metal rods rises from one end of a metal cross. Stuffed birds and yellow paper airplanes are impaled on the rods, especially reminding me of Magritte. The motif recurs in a series of pencil drawings with the same title, but these are simpler, less illustrative, and therefore barely decipherable. The exhibition also includes drawings from the series "Play", which are very fine.

The most spectacular piece in the exhibition consists of three sculptural elements titled: "Many Damaged Items Were Delivered. Some Could Be Repaired...". Even from the street, the viewer is caught by protruding wooden structures and brightly colored fabric. Inside, one sees a rack with clothing, vests, and pants on large wooden hangers, a rod with hats, and finally another rack with sleeves. These wooden structures, as Jacob Lillemose's excellent catalog text clarifies, are inspired by structures taken from airplane landing strips. The work is complex and, typical for Bang, raises more questions than it answers. However, when viewed in the context of Thomas Bang's broader oeuvre, it can perhaps be interpreted as a metaphor for change and the position of the sculptor—and perhaps the art itself—in a turbulent era.

"Stories of Fragile States," Thomas Bang's first gallery exhibition in seven years, connects to earlier works or exhibitions. For example, the piece "Instrument for All Ideas" gains deeper meaning when one realizes it is part of "Instrument for Friederike and Ida," which was shown at Sophienholm earlier this year and references Friederike Brun and her daughter Ida, who in the 19th century hosted salons at Sophienholm. At the same time, the piece draws literary or historical connections.

Many of Bang’s other works are similarly imbued with references. For instance, another work in the exhibition is titled: "It Was Unclear Whether the Region Considered the Connection Between the Shadow-Like, Creature-Like, Sticky Objects Some Had Managed to Escape, and the Little Protagonist in 'The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story,' Who Went So Far Back."

The "Tar-Baby Story" is, according to the exhibition catalog, an old folktale about how a fox teaches a conceited rabbit a lesson by placing a tar baby on the side of the road. When the rabbit, annoyed that the tar baby doesn’t greet him, strikes it, the rabbit becomes stuck in the sticky tar and cannot move. The piece bearing this title consists of a large metallic rack or shelf mounted near the ceiling and filled with piles of newspapers. Peering out from the piles are some formless black figures, resembling escaped inkblots. Some of them have fallen/jumped down and lie on a kind of stool that could also be small beds, fitted sheets, or simply newspaper baskets. It’s a peculiar work—highly odd, but perhaps precisely because of that, it is the most captivating.

Kristine Kern
Politiken

Shadow and the Tar Baby

Installation. As Thomas Bang approaches retirement age, he works at full capacity, constantly renewing his form.

If you were to give Thomas Bang a single title, most people would probably call him a visual artist. That’s how he is presented in Foghals Kunstleksikon. But something always breaks the mold and traditions when it comes to Thomas Bang’s work. This exhibition presents his newest pieces, currently on display at the Stalke Gallery in Copenhagen, in connection with the 65th birthday of the artist, who is known for his dedication to exploration and change. It’s as if an ever-present restlessness and dissatisfaction drive Bang’s work, pushing him to new creative heights, often at a remarkable pace.

At the Copenhagen gallery, one senses how Bang’s art is often as much about exceeding the limitations of traditional categories, as it is about creating art in the traditional sense. The exhibition’s title, "Stories of Fragile States," perfectly encapsulates this theme. It marks Bang’s first gallery show in seven years and represents a retrospective glance at some of the threads connecting his works.

Breaking Traditions

Bang’s sculptural works have always been defined by a form- and material-explorative post-minimalism with absurd-surrealist overtones, as Jacob Lillemose also points out in his thorough and excellent catalog text for Stalke’s exhibition. In recent years, his works have become more narrative and spatially installation-like, even theatrical. At Sophienholm, several of his works exhibited scenographic qualities and lengthy titles, resembling excerpts from strange (fictional) adventures. Bang continues this element in his new series of works, which includes five large pieces and a series of drawings collectively titled "Accounts of Fragile States." The theatrical and narrative element is emphasized not only by the title but also by the dense arrangement in the gallery’s bright main room facing the street, which enhances the scenographic effect.

The exhibition, in many ways, directly extends the works Bang presented at Sophienholm, and one of them is even titled "Instrument to All Ideas," referencing the fragile, dreamlike Ida Brun, who lived at Sophienholm in the 1800s. The piece resembles a kind of music stand or wind instrument made of aluminum, perforated as if by a projectile of black birds and a sword-like shape—elements Bang also draws from the Sophienholm works. All the pieces thus create their own peculiar, vibrating scenario of something recognizable in an absurd, distorted form, combining hard and soft elements—both eerie and homely at once. In "Trap," real birds and fragile, folded paper birds are pinned to a tree of needle-sharp aluminum. The homely-soft element in "Instrument to All Ideas" is represented by a floral piece of fabric. In "Many Injured Frights Were Delivered. Some Could Be Repaired...," the softness is embodied in sets of clothing—half-finished garments in gold, blue, orange, and tartan, alongside a stand with hat templates and something resembling a ruler, reminiscent of a tailor's workshop. Yet at the same time, the objects are rendered unreal, stylized, and absurd. The measuring rods are based on drawings of specific airport runways, which contrast with the intimacy the piece otherwise radiates.

ALL the works transform the spaces they occupy into a scene where the viewer strongly feels as if they are stepping directly into the "story" and becoming co-actors in a performance. The eerie atmosphere converges in a piece titled "It Was Unclear Whether the Region Contemplated Connections Between the Shadow-Like, Creature-Specific, Sticky, Tar-Coated Objects, from Which Some Were Lucky to Escape, and the Little Protagonist in 'The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story,' Who Went Back So Many Years Ago."

A truly original title, and if the installations didn’t already take the imagination far, it certainly takes flight when reading the text. High up under the ceiling, a shelf of old newspapers hangs. From the neatly stacked papers, strange, tar-like, oozing lumps emerge here and there. Beneath the shelf stand three collection stands with white canvases onto which some of these tar lumps appear to have dripped. The lumps smear easily, yet they are distinctly solid and almost act as signs rather than actual dripping tar. All Bang’s works are marked by a great degree of stylization and a hard, at times almost mechanical, finish. He combines this storytelling, surrealistic, grotesque, fragile atmosphere, thereby enriching both universes with elements of one another. It is the representation of this in-between space—between the almost unattainably strict, the fragile, and the theatrically associative dream layer—that makes Thomas Bang’s work stand out as something truly unique in Danish art.

Mette Sandbye

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