Fredrik Værslev
11 Sep - 25 Oct 2014
FREDRIK VÆRSLEV
A Shore Thing
11 September – 25 October 2014
A Shore Thing, Fredrik Værslev's second solo exhibition at the gallery will feature a new body of works captured entirely in white.
Fredrik Værslev’s work is distinctly collaborative in nature. When considering different series of paintings, always evident are the elements left to another – to another artist or person, or place, to nature, to malfunctions, to temperature. The “garden” paintings – works that are comprised of wood slats are left outside to gather and reveal the index of environmental happenings and forces; or the “canopy” paintings that are painted on canvas exposed to contingencies of air, humidity, and sun that often bridge different geographies and reference the suburban window shade.
For this most recent series and for A Shore Thing, the works are created with a mechanism used to make boundaries on football and soccer fields as well as roadway lines. A spray can that is mounted on a set of wheels – the trolley easily moves forward and backward (the mechanism itself manufactured to make only straight lines) and resists any curves or deviations. These defined and consistent back-and-forth lines – almost a gridding or mapping out of the surface of the canvas - are layered under and over more chaotic marks made by wheels rolling back and forth through paint – and uneven lines made by a malfunctioning sprayer and marks made from drips and differing amounts of paint – as the temperature rises or drops.
About Fredrik’s work, Peter Andam writes: “One of the most probing features of Fredrik Værslevʼs painterly non-project is a relentless, yet palpably and rigorously quiet, destabilization of mark-making signatures, “signatures of the world,” and different vectors and variations of pure contingency. It is as if the visual and tactile world that is teased out to the fore in his work is always on the verge of collapse on the weight of its own positing inexistence.”
The works in the show are monochromatically white, thus highlighting the dynamism inherent in this project of contingency further. The series unfolds like a collection of possibilities of a practice that is not wholly defined by the artist’s hand.
Fredrik Værslev was born in 1979 in Moss, Norway. He studied at Staatliche Hochschule fur Bildende Künste, Städelschule, Frankfurt and Malmö Art Academy, Sweden. He currently lives and works in Drøbak and Vestfossen. He is Director and founder of Landings Project Space, Vestfossen, Norway. Recent and upcoming solo show include: Museo Marino Marini, Firenze, Italy and CAC - Passerelle, Brest, France, (2015): East Bound and Down, The Power Station, Dallas, TX; Luminar Cité, Lisbon, Portugal (2014). His work has been recently presented in group shows such as Lé Almanach -14, Lé Consortium, Dijon, France (2014); Flex-Sil Reloaded, Kunsthalle St.Gallen; Backa in i framtiden, Lunds Konsthall, Lund: Lies About Painting, Moderna Museet, Malmö, Sweden (2013).
A Shore Thing
11 September – 25 October 2014
A Shore Thing, Fredrik Værslev's second solo exhibition at the gallery will feature a new body of works captured entirely in white.
Fredrik Værslev’s work is distinctly collaborative in nature. When considering different series of paintings, always evident are the elements left to another – to another artist or person, or place, to nature, to malfunctions, to temperature. The “garden” paintings – works that are comprised of wood slats are left outside to gather and reveal the index of environmental happenings and forces; or the “canopy” paintings that are painted on canvas exposed to contingencies of air, humidity, and sun that often bridge different geographies and reference the suburban window shade.
For this most recent series and for A Shore Thing, the works are created with a mechanism used to make boundaries on football and soccer fields as well as roadway lines. A spray can that is mounted on a set of wheels – the trolley easily moves forward and backward (the mechanism itself manufactured to make only straight lines) and resists any curves or deviations. These defined and consistent back-and-forth lines – almost a gridding or mapping out of the surface of the canvas - are layered under and over more chaotic marks made by wheels rolling back and forth through paint – and uneven lines made by a malfunctioning sprayer and marks made from drips and differing amounts of paint – as the temperature rises or drops.
About Fredrik’s work, Peter Andam writes: “One of the most probing features of Fredrik Værslevʼs painterly non-project is a relentless, yet palpably and rigorously quiet, destabilization of mark-making signatures, “signatures of the world,” and different vectors and variations of pure contingency. It is as if the visual and tactile world that is teased out to the fore in his work is always on the verge of collapse on the weight of its own positing inexistence.”
The works in the show are monochromatically white, thus highlighting the dynamism inherent in this project of contingency further. The series unfolds like a collection of possibilities of a practice that is not wholly defined by the artist’s hand.
Fredrik Værslev was born in 1979 in Moss, Norway. He studied at Staatliche Hochschule fur Bildende Künste, Städelschule, Frankfurt and Malmö Art Academy, Sweden. He currently lives and works in Drøbak and Vestfossen. He is Director and founder of Landings Project Space, Vestfossen, Norway. Recent and upcoming solo show include: Museo Marino Marini, Firenze, Italy and CAC - Passerelle, Brest, France, (2015): East Bound and Down, The Power Station, Dallas, TX; Luminar Cité, Lisbon, Portugal (2014). His work has been recently presented in group shows such as Lé Almanach -14, Lé Consortium, Dijon, France (2014); Flex-Sil Reloaded, Kunsthalle St.Gallen; Backa in i framtiden, Lunds Konsthall, Lund: Lies About Painting, Moderna Museet, Malmö, Sweden (2013).