Erik A. Frandsen, Arbejdere.
Erik A. Frandsen, Neonlampe, Foto Ole Hein Pedersen.
Erik A. Frandsen, Bakke.
Erik A. Frandsen, Blomsterbillede. |
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ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum
Aros Allé 2
+45 8730 6600
Århus
Special Exhibition Gallery
Erik A. Frandsen –
The Double Space
10 October 2008-4 January 2009
Erik A. Frandsen – The Double Space, the largest collection ever of works by the Danish artist, encompasses works from his entire oeuvre: from the wild paintings at the beginning of the 1980s to the brand-new mosaics done by the artist especially for this exhibition. Erik A. Frandsen takes over the entire museum with his spectacular pictorial universe when over more than 2000 square metres — in the Special Exhibition Gallery, the Special Exhibition Foyer, the Museum Street and the stairway — he shows his great neon sculptures, steel flowers, glass mosaics, sculptures, paintings etc.
Despite the fact that he has long enjoyed international recognition, the 51-year-old artist has never been presented on such a scale before. He made his international breakthrough as long ago as 1992, when he participated in the prestigious Dokumenta IX at Kassel. Since then, he has presented countless exhibitions both at home and abroad. Today, Erik A. Frandsen is moreover represented in Danish art museums by a larger number of works than any other artist.
The Neon Lamps Erik A. Frandsen – The Double Space takes the visitor along with him on a journey through a total installation — from the fluorescent tubes in the foyer with Frandsen statements such as Lebensraum, White Power and Evergreen to the gigantic five-metre-in-diameter fluorescent lamp hovering in the large Special Exhibition Gallery. The beautiful and spectacular fluorescent lamp completes Erik A. Frandsen’s decoration of the Art Restaurant with the three impressive fluorescent lamps 90 centimetres in diameter and the four large Frandsen steel images with flower motifs from 2004. The fluorescent lamps, which are among the artist’s most recent works, were inspired by the lines drawn in the air by a pair of lovers’ hands when they are caressing each other. So the fluorescent signs are the tracks after an act of love.
Dual Rooms The exhibition is staged as double spaces with reflections and infinity effects. The Special Exhibition Gallery is divided into two large areas in which the colourful, floating fluorescent sculpture reflects its organic lines in large steel images and in a six-metre wide and six-metre high steel rotundas in the exhibition gallery alongside. Dual space is also presented in the steel images with flower motifs. The cool steel here reflects the wilting flowers that are projected into the images, preventing viewers from reflecting themselves without at the same time seeing the wilting flowers. Apart from the fact that the works revolve around a classic memento mori motif in a new form, they acquire an extra dimension when, by exposing the viewer as a guest in the art universe, Erik A. Frandsen establishes his characteristic dual view on art and reality. Most recently, Erik A. Frandsen has worked with mosaics, and for the exhibition in ARoS he has made ten new glass mosaics combining the ancient art form with photographic motifs — snapshots from the USA with references to American popular culture in the form of Disney, Spiderman and Marlboro. In motif, the mosaics present the visual reality in which we live today, but they also refer back to Antiquity, when mosaic art was the means and expression for circulating images. The mosaics have been made on the basis of photographic models in the artist’s book “The frozen moment desert”. The photographs are also shown in the exhibition.
Eyefucking Since the wild works of the 1980s, Erik A. Frandsen’s artistic project has been an insistent and intensive search for double space. By combining things that are recognisable with striking structures, physical objects and abstract forms, the artist creates a duality in which figure and structure challenge each other. The artist’s paintings are anything but oil on canvas; his signature is a form of sculptural painting with a variety of objects applied — rockwool, lead, plastic trays, photos, eggs and steel wire — which either are vehicles for meanings or block them out. The many layers or blocks leave the viewer with a sense of unsatisfied desire, of not being able quite to penetrate to the core of the meaning in these works. Erik A. Frandsen calls it “eyefucking” when the eye is sent roving about in and out among the figurative motif and the physical objects.
The Frandsen Gaze You can also in this exhibition experience Frandsen’s disturbing family pictures from the end of the 1990s, which expose the duality in Frandsen himself and the skewed view of reality that is the artist’s special characteristic. The pictures portray his family in everyday situations and give an immediate impression of a harmonious family life, but as viewers we do not feel quite comfortable in the family idyll. In the series about his family, the artist combines painting and photography but with Frandsen the guarantor of reality is not the photograph but rather the painting, which with its semi-abstract everyday realism constitutes a kind of representation of reality.. |
