Press Release for the Exhibition

"Coming up"

Date: 06.01.96

Stalke has asked 11 young Danish artists, who have or have had a collaboration with the gallery, to participate in the selection of 11 other younger artists.

The "strict conditions" set by Stalke are that each representative may only choose one artist, whom they each believe has an interesting project/concept in their artistic expression. The exhibition is intended to open up an opportunity to showcase a broader range of young art, where, moreover, no thematic cohesion has been deliberately sought.

The exhibition should be seen as a snapshot of what is happening on the younger art scene in the 1990s, and not as an attempt to define a "Top 10" list of a "new" generation.

For Stalke, it has been important to involve the "older" 90s generation in "pointing" to this specific generation, which has held Stalke's great interest over several years.

The exhibition starts on January 12 and runs through February 3, 1996.

The exhibiting artists will be:

Claus Andersen - Anne Mette Arendt - Niels Bonde - Ulrik Heltoft - Simone Aaberg Kærn - Nikolaj Recke - Tal Rosenzweig - Tommy Støckel - Annika Ström - Klaus Thejll - Lena Ignestam

The names of the 11 artists responsible for the "selection":

Olafur Eliasson - Nils Erik Gjerdevik - Peter Holst Henckel - Frans Jacobi - Lars Mathisen - Peter Neuchs - Lars Bent Petersen - Hans Petersson - Christian Schmidt-Rasmussen - Peter Rössel - Joachim Koester

Sam Jedig and Kim Bendixen

Reviews:

Against the Establishment

The art world consists not only of art. Art is intertwined with a web of connections that qualify it as art. One of these connections is the social credit inherent in the term "established." It is important for an artist to become established, just as it is important for an exhibition venue. This means one can sell, become even more established, and sell even more, and so forth.

A praiseworthy uncompromising commitment and faith in one's art have quickly placed Galleri Nicolai Wallner on its way to the center of the established art scene. Currently, the 29-year-old Danish artist Peter Land, visiting from England, is exhibiting. The exhibition, titled Step Ladder Blues, features a video with accompanying props and still images.

The video's soundtrack is the overture to Wagner's Tannhäuser. "That’s not blues," it rightly states in the opening credits, but the visual side compensates: A man climbs a stepladder and falls. Again and again and again. The video's simple yet well-executed tragicomic point lies in the contrast between the music's progressing pathos and the pitiful repetition of Sisyphean images.

Land focuses on failure—the awkward, silly mistakes—and sets it to music in the best slapstick tradition. Humanity becomes laughable when it loses control, when it is mechanical. Yet through this musical repetition, failure becomes an ornament—the unfortunate exception becomes the cornerstone of a new normal state. Establishment through a mistake.

STALKE Kunsthandel is a more established place than Wallner. But here, they’ve taken a chance by asking 11 recently established young artists to recommend 11 newcomers. The result is a mixed exhibition of the newest trends, where communication and ideas matter more than craftsmanship.

Tommy Støckel, Nikolaj Recke, and Ulrik Heltoft all present minimalist meta-art. Støckel least of all, with a woven star resting on the tip of a matchstick 0.9 mm wide. Recke is funniest when he mimics Yves Klein's body imprints by making imprints of his nose on the wall. Klein's ideas about the beauty of the body’s measure vanish when Recke, in a video documentation, on a skateboard, wearing a bicycle helmet, and with his nose smeared in lipstick, crashes headlong into the wall. Klaus Thejll Jakobsen's large drawing, Supervixens—titled after a cult film by Russ Meyer—shows a surreal intertwined image of fluid movements. Lena Ignestam exhibits a nearly invisible yet fascinating collection of “thought bubbles” emerging from a corner of the ceiling. Also featured are Annika Ström, Anne Mette Arendt, Tal Rosenzweig, Claus Andersen, Niels Bonde, and Simone Aaberg Kærn.

Ulrik Heltoft has painted over a painting by the young '90s artist Joakim Koester, cut it into strips, and turned it into a pillow, which, along with a small monochromatic surface, forms a mini-installation. At times, it moves so fast that the only step forward is the destruction of the preceding.

OUTSIDE the fully established circle, and at a slower pace, a more conciliatory approach toward the mainstream can be found at Reed Gallery.

Currently, the 34-year-old Bent Hedeby Sørensen is presenting traditional abstract oil paintings. His paintings are first and foremost skillful. With effectively controlled layering and light-shadow effects made with thin oil over a layer of acrylic, he makes the canvas seem to bend in dark blue, brown, and black stripes. There is both depth and lightness, structure and transience, all at once. He expresses the motivation for these canvases, all titled Observation, with an archaic touch: "The hope inherent in humanity's striving for abstract beauty."

By Karsten R. S. Ifversen

Energetic Flight

In what appears to be a status update, one can get a view of eleven "wannabes" at Stalke Kunsthandel on Vesterbrogade, selected by eleven of the gallery's male (!) resident artists. This should guarantee quality. Nevertheless, the exhibition "Coming Up" is a rather mixed experience, with several works lacking any clear substance.

However, there are definite gems among them, such as Simone Aaberg Kærn’s tableau “Royal Greenland” from 1995, which continues her now several-years-old “flight project.” After multiple attempts to approach the heavens, she flies in “Royal Greenland” to hectic music, now effortlessly and cheerfully soaring over the vast Greenlandic ice. The work serves as a metaphor for a psychological state characterized by a sense of release and, not least, infectious energy.

A Keepsake Star

In Claus Andersen’s work “You and Me Forever,” the viewer is confronted with themselves, so to speak. On five glass shelves stacked above one another, flat petri dishes containing bacteria and fungi from both male and female bodies are placed. The height of the shelves indicates the body area where the bacteria originate. Nutrient plasma (a fluid enriched with red and white blood cells) “adds color” and gives the bacteria we cannot directly see or feel a physical presence. The invisible and abstract are, in the most wondrous way, made visible and highly tangible in Claus Andersen’s dishes.

The exhibition’s physically smallest work is Tommy Stöckel’s “Braided Star.” Here, one almost needs a magnifying glass, and if it weren’t for a marker indicating the work, it could easily fade into obscurity. And that is precisely the opposite of its intent. Continuing Stöckel’s interest in and work with the concept of records as a means to leave a lasting impression and, in turn, document one’s existence, “Braided Star” is a thought-provoking contribution that, at the very least, aims for the grandest in the smallest.

Malene la Cour Rasmussen