Jan Christensen
18 Feb - 11 Mar 2006
Jan Christensen
Opening reception:
Saturday, February 18th, 2006, 6 - 9 p.m.
Duration: February 18 – March 11. 2006
c/o - Atle Gerhardsen is pleased to announce Jan Christensen's third solo-exhibition in Berlin.
For the exhibition he will install two text pieces entitled "Tomorrow Never Comes" (2006) and "Everybody Thinks That It Means Too Much" (2005-2006). The first work is a small wall painting that looks like a sentence that has been shuffled, showing hand-written words seemingly misplaced and repeated on the wall. The second piece is a new installment in a series of installations that always has the same title, but which never look the same. The evasive title produces an ambiguous, sometimes confusing, interpretation depending on the interchangeable text or image that is written or depicted.
The idea of rejecting art, and maybe the fear of failing, crystallizes in the small painting "Untitled (001)" (2005). This is the artist's first piece in a numbered series of works where he experiments with painting on canvas. This very first canvas only reads "the fact that this is meaningless doesn't mean that it can't be art". It holds a critical, almost nihilist, acknowledgement of his practice and the objecthood of art, at the same time that it questions the definitions of aura and originality.
The photographs on display document installations where the artist literally painted himself into a corner. These ironic serial gestures refer to the the paradox of signature style as the ultimate end of artistic practice.
Jan Christensen was born 1977 in Copenhagen and studied in Oslo at the National College of Art and Design, 1997-2000. We are proud to announce that he will have a solo exhibition at Kunsthaus Baselland in Basel, Switzerland, curated by Sabine Schaschl-Cooper. The exhibition will open 5th of May and will be on display during Art 37 Basel 2006. Kunsthaus Baselland also publishes a book on his work this year. Jan Christensen has recently had residencies at FRAC des Pays de la Loire in Nantes and the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, and he has been awarded a generous grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York.
Please do not hesitate to contact Sabine Schmidt / c/o - Atle Gerhardsen for further assistance and visual material at T: +49-30-69518341, F: +49-30-69518342, e-mail: office@atlegerhardsen.com or visit our website at http://www.atlegerhardsen.com.
© Jan Christensen
Everybody Thinks That It Means Too Much, 2006
Acrylic paint, wall painting
Variable dimensions
installation at c/o - Atle Gerhardsen, approx 450 x 825 cm
Unique
Opening reception:
Saturday, February 18th, 2006, 6 - 9 p.m.
Duration: February 18 – March 11. 2006
c/o - Atle Gerhardsen is pleased to announce Jan Christensen's third solo-exhibition in Berlin.
For the exhibition he will install two text pieces entitled "Tomorrow Never Comes" (2006) and "Everybody Thinks That It Means Too Much" (2005-2006). The first work is a small wall painting that looks like a sentence that has been shuffled, showing hand-written words seemingly misplaced and repeated on the wall. The second piece is a new installment in a series of installations that always has the same title, but which never look the same. The evasive title produces an ambiguous, sometimes confusing, interpretation depending on the interchangeable text or image that is written or depicted.
The idea of rejecting art, and maybe the fear of failing, crystallizes in the small painting "Untitled (001)" (2005). This is the artist's first piece in a numbered series of works where he experiments with painting on canvas. This very first canvas only reads "the fact that this is meaningless doesn't mean that it can't be art". It holds a critical, almost nihilist, acknowledgement of his practice and the objecthood of art, at the same time that it questions the definitions of aura and originality.
The photographs on display document installations where the artist literally painted himself into a corner. These ironic serial gestures refer to the the paradox of signature style as the ultimate end of artistic practice.
Jan Christensen was born 1977 in Copenhagen and studied in Oslo at the National College of Art and Design, 1997-2000. We are proud to announce that he will have a solo exhibition at Kunsthaus Baselland in Basel, Switzerland, curated by Sabine Schaschl-Cooper. The exhibition will open 5th of May and will be on display during Art 37 Basel 2006. Kunsthaus Baselland also publishes a book on his work this year. Jan Christensen has recently had residencies at FRAC des Pays de la Loire in Nantes and the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, and he has been awarded a generous grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York.
Please do not hesitate to contact Sabine Schmidt / c/o - Atle Gerhardsen for further assistance and visual material at T: +49-30-69518341, F: +49-30-69518342, e-mail: office@atlegerhardsen.com or visit our website at http://www.atlegerhardsen.com.
© Jan Christensen
Everybody Thinks That It Means Too Much, 2006
Acrylic paint, wall painting
Variable dimensions
installation at c/o - Atle Gerhardsen, approx 450 x 825 cm
Unique