Review:

Eroticism and Candy

Stalke Kunsthandel, Vesterbrogade 14a, Copenhagen.

What won’t one do to spark interest in art exhibitions? Stalke presents its current exhibition of paintings by Niels Erik Gjerdevik and Hans Petterson with the exclamation: “For years, many have been waiting for painting’s comeback. The waiting time is over.” One wonders. Especially if one has kept even a half-open eye on these two artists over the last few years, during which both have painted diligently. While the paintings presented at Stalke are new, they are not fundamentally different from the two painters’ earlier work.

Well, the paintings can’t help how they are accompanied by catchy words. Here, I must try with others. First and foremost, it is a very extensive exhibition—there really is a lot of painting. Hans Petterson imaginatively explores a naïve cartoonish style with no less than 50 paintings, pursuing Petterson’s typical motifs: erotic and pornographic arrangements or mythological figures from popular culture, confronted in painterly ruptures and constellations. Quick paintings.

Gjerdevik’s images, on the other hand, emphasize form over imaginative painterly experiments. Here, painting is brought to the outer edges of colorism with radiant candy-colored compositions in abstract formations with occasional figurative and narrative elements in the geology of painting. Two painters who complement each other.

Malene West Hansen