bjarne werner sørensen

transitions

june 4 – july 29, 2022

elizabeth harris gallery

529 w20 st ny 10011

opening reception: saturday, june 4, 12-6 pm

PRESS RELEASE

The Elizabeth Harris Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition titled transitions by the Danish artist Bjarne Werner Sørensen. This will be his first exhibition with the gallery.

The artist writes: The works in this exhibition bring into focus oil painting in its traditional form. There is a solid core, a body and other elements that sprout from this form. The composition of the paintings is central and is twisted and turned throughout the process of painting. When they are painted from the one side, the paintings are then rotated and ultimately worked on from all the other sides. The works are all the same size, but they appear very diverse in color and composition.

These paintings are based on a basic experience of perception of motion, and become an interplay between chaos, energy and order. Scattered and gathered at once, they form an organic geometry as if put in a constantly changing formula. The brushstrokes and the encounters between the colors are visible, and highlight the concrete physical process in the painting. The works cycle between the immediate tactile sense of the materiality, and the uncontrolled wanderings of the associations. One experiences space opening behind the surface.

The paintings are abstractions. They do not portray anything immediately recognizable. Stressing movement and contrast, the gestural applied colors and forms make for compositions imprinted with a variety of natural phenomena. The tangled webs of lines and convoluted planes that cover the canvas represent, if anything, inner forces of nature.

Nature is any involuntary development and transition; an endeavor that has no awareness of being bound by time or limited by space. If the tree knew of its final shape and height, it could be a question for every single twig, because it would constantly have to relate to something given. It could not exist

For the indefinite, take the example of nature, it is characteristic that it contains no consciousness of its beginning or end, it proceeds, it exists. Its cessation is not bound to anything other than time, and thus cannot be predicted or postponed.

Improvisation is an unfolding of nature. Exploring nature without being taught, as a continuation of matter unfolding. Improvisation becomes an extension of the exploration of nature into consciousness: nature coming back to itself.

The Danish poet and philosopher Per Højholt (1928-2004) wrote in the final paragraph of his essay Cézanne’s Method (1967): Art, like everything else, is of no use, but differs from everything else in that it can be a part of our life on conditions we have not set ourselves. By formulating an interval, it gives us the opportunity to experience that we exist.

Bjarne Werner Sørensen has painted for most of his life. He was born in Denmark in 1960 and lives and works in Copenhagen. In 1985 he graduated from the Jutland Academy of Fine Arts in Denmark. Even though the organic substance he releases onto the canvas appears Nordic and dramatic on the outside, the nature of his work is not only Nordic. There is a taste of the world that has a complexity beyond graphic simplicity. He grew up in Syria, Lebanon and then north of Copenhagen. And he spent a good part of his formative years shuttling back and forth between Faroe Islands where his mother was born (an archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean between Iceland and Norway) and Copenhagen where his father was born, and has made the country-city duality of this aspect of his life a defining motif of his art. His parents moved from Denmark to Iran in 1975 where their son would visit them. In 1979 they returned to their homeland before moving to Thailand, where they lived from 1982 to 1986, and he spent six months in Thailand in spring 1986. He has exhibited widely in US, Denmark and abroad. He has been in artist-residencies in Helsinki, Paris, Berlin and New York (International Studio & Curatorial Program). He is a recipient of several grants and awards and his work is represented in numerous public collections and institutions, including The National Gallery of Denmark; and The New Carlsberg Foundation.

The Gallery is located at 529 West 20th Street, 6th floor, and is open Tuesday through Saturday 12 – 6 pm. The artist will be present for an opening reception on Saturday, June 4th, from 12-6 pm.

For further information contact Miles Manning at 212 463-9666.