Mette Winckelmann
05 May - 17 Jun 2006
METTE WINCHELMANN
"Various Voices in a Shared Situation"
It is a great pleasure to be able to present Danish artist Mette Winckelmann's second solo exhibition at Galleri Christina Wilson.
In this exhibition, Mette Winckelmann continues her exploration of abstract, geometric forms in painting. In this she is markedly distinct from her contemporary colleagues, who tend to work more with figurative and narrative painting.
In the gallery, Winckelmann has built a large wooden construction on which the paintings are hung. The wooden construction acts as a kind of obstacle to be overcome, as it obliges the observer to move around the room in order to see the paintings. There is no one point at which all of the paintings can be seen ? and already here, Winckelmann provides an indication of how she wishes the exhibition to be experienced.
Mette Winckelmann's form language is hard-edge, á la fifties Richard Mortensen. To challenge such a major figure in Danish art is a difficult endeavour, but closer inspection reveals that Winckelmann and Mortensen are quite distant from each other. Whereas Mortensen concentrated on emphasising the universal language of geometry through squares, circles and triangles, Winckelmann's paintings in this exhibition are structured around the theme of flags. All of the paintings have national flags as their underlying principle of construction. There are strict rules governing how flags may be composed: halves, thirds, the golden section, etc. Winckelmann subjects herself to these fundamental rules, often several different ones in the same picture, and changes them between pictures. She then does everything she can to break these down, blurring them with shadows, deconstructing them by drawing lines through them, painting waves across them (like flags flying in the breeze), and colouring them so individually that each painting acquires an independent identity. National flags build precisely upon the idea of being able to unite people around a common identity ? some people are included in the cultivated community, while others are shut out. For Winckelmann, the exhibition and these paintings represent a battleground in which hierarchies and conventions of gender, identity and accepted notions are broken down.
Similarly, Winckelmann takes up the fight against the primacy of painting as an artistic medium. There are no romantic ideas here concerning the individual creative power of the artist, no fairy-tales, but rather a mature consideration of a painting as an object in a room. How does it affect the observer? Where is the usual hierarchical exhibition structure, in which each individual painting is subject to a clearly orchestrated theme? These paintings mimic the forefathers of modernism in art history, but there is something quite different going on in Mette Winckelmann's exhibition Various Voices in a Shared Situation.
"Various Voices in a Shared Situation"
It is a great pleasure to be able to present Danish artist Mette Winckelmann's second solo exhibition at Galleri Christina Wilson.
In this exhibition, Mette Winckelmann continues her exploration of abstract, geometric forms in painting. In this she is markedly distinct from her contemporary colleagues, who tend to work more with figurative and narrative painting.
In the gallery, Winckelmann has built a large wooden construction on which the paintings are hung. The wooden construction acts as a kind of obstacle to be overcome, as it obliges the observer to move around the room in order to see the paintings. There is no one point at which all of the paintings can be seen ? and already here, Winckelmann provides an indication of how she wishes the exhibition to be experienced.
Mette Winckelmann's form language is hard-edge, á la fifties Richard Mortensen. To challenge such a major figure in Danish art is a difficult endeavour, but closer inspection reveals that Winckelmann and Mortensen are quite distant from each other. Whereas Mortensen concentrated on emphasising the universal language of geometry through squares, circles and triangles, Winckelmann's paintings in this exhibition are structured around the theme of flags. All of the paintings have national flags as their underlying principle of construction. There are strict rules governing how flags may be composed: halves, thirds, the golden section, etc. Winckelmann subjects herself to these fundamental rules, often several different ones in the same picture, and changes them between pictures. She then does everything she can to break these down, blurring them with shadows, deconstructing them by drawing lines through them, painting waves across them (like flags flying in the breeze), and colouring them so individually that each painting acquires an independent identity. National flags build precisely upon the idea of being able to unite people around a common identity ? some people are included in the cultivated community, while others are shut out. For Winckelmann, the exhibition and these paintings represent a battleground in which hierarchies and conventions of gender, identity and accepted notions are broken down.
Similarly, Winckelmann takes up the fight against the primacy of painting as an artistic medium. There are no romantic ideas here concerning the individual creative power of the artist, no fairy-tales, but rather a mature consideration of a painting as an object in a room. How does it affect the observer? Where is the usual hierarchical exhibition structure, in which each individual painting is subject to a clearly orchestrated theme? These paintings mimic the forefathers of modernism in art history, but there is something quite different going on in Mette Winckelmann's exhibition Various Voices in a Shared Situation.