Hans Peterson

Stalke Galleri was pleased to open its doors to an exhibition presenting new paintings by Hans Peterson and works by Jonas Hvid Søndergaard in the Project Room.

Hans Peterson presented five large, square paintings that explored themes of identity and worldview. Petersson examined processes of identification by blending figurative and abstract elements. Placed around the canvases, recognizable forms such as houses or human figures appeared, while other areas remained undefined and composed of colorful shapes. Familiar objects were borrowed from other sources, such as winged Amazons from kitschy comic books, where Petersson shifted their context and thereby disrupted conventional notions of identity.

Through this approach, Peterson investigated perceptions of identity and questioned the reliability of what is seen. He drew inspiration from Gothic tales by Edgar Allan Poe and Sherlock Holmes, as well as from the adventurous narratives of comic books and fairy tales. These varied universes were evident in his exploration of how recognition and identity were constructed. By placing figures in new contexts and reversing expected hierarchies, he challenged perceptions of their original identities. Petersson employed character stereotypes to examine identity, pushing it away from self-assurance and breaking it down into a constructed and fragile universe.

In the Project Room, Jonas Hvid Søndergaard presented new paintings created specifically for the space. He worked with photographs of interiors and exteriors, producing digital sketches based on these images, which were overlapped and fragmented until the result approached an almost abstract landscape. Trees, stairs, windows, and tiles functioned as nearly graphic elements within a space where form, surface, space, and color interacted. A recognizable reality was suggested, while the loose fragments revealed an independent abstract life.

Hvid Søndergaard also explored techniques that animated the creation of the paintings, presenting this process in a new film. In the film, he introduced the architecture of the Project Room, referring to it as “the living image,” and illustrated how it might appear if the surfaces within the paintings could move freely. Whereas the paintings functioned as abstractions of figurative elements, the film reversed this relationship by showing the figuration inherent in abstraction. Through animation effects, the focus shifted to what existed “beside” the frame and to what normally remained outside the canvas and never became paint.

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