MellemRum-Janus Vestjyllands Kunstmuseum, 2019
Mellemrum is an exhibition by artists Manuel Canu Allan Stabel, Stine Jespersen and Kirsten Bøgh.
After theirs first collaboration debut at Gammelgård Kunstcenter, with theres exhibition Mellem/Rum, the artists are now presenting a new body of work at Janus Bygning. Here the audience is invited to experience a conversation between the artists two dimensional and tree dimensional works.
In this exhibition, the dialog between the art works are exposing the different approaches to media used by the single artists and their common interest in the relationship between the material and immaterial. And it is exactly the space between the material and immaterial that this exhibition aims to explore.
In a playful interaction between medias, in Mellemrum we can see how painting are taking shape and volume, and viceversa, ceramic sculptures are immortalised on the surface of canvases. But what lays between those two dimensions? The contrast between those two dimensions create an intangible place, is that a real space or it may be just an illusion, an idea, a concept? With those question in mind the artists curate the exhibition, delving into the abstract realm of space and place, opening up for the viewer own interpretation.
Allan Stabel with his expressive-constructivism paintings, is reinterpreting the understanding of form and space through the visual study of disposable packaging materials, byproducts of mass consumerism. The subjects in Allan paintings are repeatedly portrayed, inspecting multiple narratives between colour and composition.
Accordingly, Stine Jespersen ceramics sculptures apply repetition as a tool for finding uniqueness. The meticulously hand built sculptures apply a nearly meditative means to find novelty in the obvious, giving to each sculpture a distinctive expression.
In Kirsten Bøgh paintings, a composition of exotics patterns, resembling organic structures, and western still-life portrait, are merged together trough the arrangement of colour and light.This to create a cultural dialogue and space in which we are invited to enter. At times the viewer is just a spectator of a inaccessible dream like scene.
Interacting with the ornamental qualities that characterises the exhibition, Manuel Canu, with the creation of installations, ceramic sculptures and drawings, attempts to establish a relationship between space and self-identity. With inspiration in architecture, he works with opposites between physical and intangible characters, familiar and remoteness, as well as fragility and stability.
