Carsten Fock: Painting and Its Discontents Event

Opening
Tue, 6 December, 6–9 pm

In Painting and Its Discontents, the artist Carsten Fock (*1968), who lives in Bamberg and Vejby, Denmark, formulates with simple and very reduced means his discomfort in post-Corona culture and in current painting – both in the art scene and in his own practice.

The 10 monotypes shown were created at a kind of retreat, Fock’s studio in Vejby, on the cliffs of the Kattegat, where he works in complete seclusion. Here, between September 2020 and January 2021, he realized for the first time non-objective works on paper, all drawn with his fingers, in which a horizon, light conditions, colors, weather are hinted at. This reduction was also a reaction to the collective and personal feeling of being stuck in a dead end. The “landscape paintings” were about new beginnings, literally letting go of expectations, control, pre- and post-images, knowledge of art history and current discourses.

The exploration of landscape painting is a central aspect of Fock’s artistic work. In his paintings and painting installations, the artist, who grew up in the former GDR and fled to the Federal Republic in 1988, combined for decades the examination of his own biography and the critical questioning of East-West painting in the divided Germany of the sixties and seventies. In the process, he repeatedly addressed the ideological role of art and the artist, the power relations that painting represents. It is no coincidence that the color field painting in the current pictures is reminiscent of painters such as Günther Förg or Blinky Palermo. The use of monotype is at the same time a homage to Fock’s teacher Per Kirkeby, who used this technique to deal in particular with the complex perception of nature and spiritual experience.

Oliver Koerner von Gustorf has written a text about the exhibition.

In the adjacent space, our gallery neighbours Zeller van Almsick are showing a group exhibition, titled Angel Dust, featuring Dejan Dukic, Titania Seidl and Esben Weile Kjaer among others.