V1 Gallery proudly presents the two exhibitions: A SPOON WITH THE BREAD KNIFE by Danny Fox (UK) and CAN by Rose Eken (DK) + Gallery Eighteen TECHNO FOSSIL TUMBLEWEED by Thomas Øvlisen (DK).
Opening reception: Friday November 25. 2016. Time: 17.00 – 22.00 (from 17.00 – 21.00 in Eighteen).
Exhibition period: November 26. 2016 – January 14. 2017.
Danny Fox: Strong women, men on a horse back – racing to their future or escaping their past, classic fruit bowls, a glass of red wine – half empty or full, depending on current mood and perspective, bad bananas, a specific red color borrowed from an old colleague and spoons are reoccurring elements in Danny Fox’s new body of work A Spoon With The Bread Knife. The title a reference to English rhyming slang where the bread knife translates to wife and spoon to cuddle. Fox’s work is full of references, conversations and possible translations. In his paintings he engages a rich history of both figuration and abstraction. Many of the new paintings feature prominent female leads like the large canvas The Women Are Angry And We Pretend Not To Know Why (244 x 305 cm). Many of the men in Fox’s paintings are riding horses, this beautiful potent creature that has carried man to victory and grave. In No Reward Unpunished (61 x 76 cm) two riders are galloping for the Guinness. The men often have an empathetic tragic feel in Fox’s work, while the women feel empowered and secure. Tragedy and genocide are translated into beautiful fragmented abstraction in the two large red paintings Eraser (Leopold In The Congo)(183 x 213 cm) and Rubber (Leopold In The Congo)(183 x 213 cm). Danny Fox’s works are compelling, they engage you in conversation, they seem both urgent, personal and universal. The paintings are bold and brave while equally fragile and wry. On a tightrope between greatness and elegant disaster.
Rose Eken’s new exhibition takes its departure in a group of paint cans. Not just any cans –Jackson Pollock’s paint cans. Eken found a vintage photo of the infamous American artist’s studio and created a group of 22 ceramic objects in the work Homage A Pollock in 2015. The motif kept haunting Eken and she returned to it in the spring of 2016 where she began to make tinsel paintings – reverse paintings on glass with applied crumbled metallic foil – of the image, deconstructing and reconstructing the tableau over and over again.
The result is CAN – a suite of 16 new paintings with acrylic and porcelain paint on glass in various sizes and the original ceramic installation.
CAN is a study of a studio. Meta still lives. The tools of the trade – brushes, pipettes, turpentine, linseed oil, buckets, paint tubes and cans. The tinsel technique is difficult to master because the artist has to paint in reverse on the backside of the glass. It was a technique Eken first encountered at the American Folk Art Museum in New York. It was mainly practiced by women in America between 1850 and 1890. Eken has been working with tinsel painting for the past 5 years gradually challenging the often very refined finish of the tradition making space for a more gestural expression. Breaking the mold by translating the tools of the original male painter Jackson Pollock through an old feminine folk art tradition. The result is a series of radiant expressive works.
Techno Fossil Tumbleweed is a new suite of sculptures by Thomas Øvlisen. The title of the group of 5 sculptures refer to the relatively new phenomena (in the four and a half billion years of the history of our planet) of technofossils – the vast and unprecedented impact humans are leaving on earth. ”Paleontologists call preserved animal-made structures trace fossils. Most animal species make
only one – or at most a very few – different types of trace. For example, dinosaurs made footprints and worms leave burrows. Just one species, though — Homo sapiens — now manufactures literally
millions of different types of traces that range from nano-scale to city-sized.” Jan Zalasiewicz, University of Leichester, Britain, in Tech Times, March 2014.
Øvlisen’s beautiful new body of hollow, cubical, offset, jagged sculptures resemble a contemporary nonchalant Stonehenge in the gallery space. Otherworldly objects from a near past future. Each sculpture is roughly a cubic meter, created in polystyrene, fabric, epoxy and multiple layers of auto lacquer. The viewer is invited to gently engage with the sculptures, position them as they like, and create their personal constellations. This makes for a both transgressive and almost meditative experience. Creating space for contemplation, a true privilege in our time. ”Millions of years from now, long after humans have gone, technofossils will be the defining
imprint on the strata of the human epoch that people increasingly call the Anthropocene. If any paleontologists were to appear on — or visit — the Earth in the far geological future, they will think
the technofossil layer more weird and wonderful, by far, than dinosaur bones” Mark Williams, University of Leichester, Britain, in Tech Times, March 2014.
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