Peter Linde Busk
14 Feb - 21 Mar 2015
PETER LINDE BUSK
Gentlemen
14 February - 21 March 2015
Monitor is delighted to announce the opening of its second solo show devoted to the work of Peter Linde Busk, who just last year was included in the 100 Painters of Tomorrow catalogue of artists selected by Kurt Beers and published by Thames and Hudson. With the somewhat ironic title Gentlemen, the show orchestrates several components of Busk’s practice to include new large-scale paintings on linen, ceramics, lithographs and etchings.
Busk’s new ceramics are presented standing on butcher’s blocks. Glazed white, these distorted, twisted and pocked forms appear more like haunted versions of figuration than the thing itself. There is the sense that they might be battle-scarred; a motif carried through to the butcher’s blocks-cum-plinths whose surfaces can never be fully rid of the violence formerly staged there. An allusion to past injury that is only brought into sharper relief when noting that the blocks themselves have been adapted with prosthesis-like leg extensions. Reminiscent also of hooves also, these extensions lend the blocks a bestial quality, albeit one that has endured considerable pain.
The brutalised appearance of Busk’s ceramics thematise the process of beating, moulding and firing by which they are made. He presents us with mournful and visibly agonized relics that have both literally and metaphorically been to hell and back. In this sense, his series of four head-like reliefs, displayed here upon decorated oval grounds, become achingly macabre trophies.
An Assyrian proverb Busk had in mind during the completion process sheds greater light on the works. ‘Fear the Goat from the Front, the Horse from the Rear, and the Man from All Sides’. Although the proverb reads somewhat like a warning (one gleaned from the kind of wisdom that only experience can bring), the works in the show provide the evidence as to why such caution might be uttered.
To wit, his new series of paintings offer a glimpse into how a world oblivious to such prudence might look. Busk has traditionally borrowed elements from the theatre such as pathetic fallacy: intense atmospheric patterning conveys psychological states and here the figures are contained and isolated within a world of sinuous imagery. Each painting in this new series depicts the relationship: between man and woman. Just like Adam and Eve In Milton’s Paradise Lost Adam follows Eve are led into sin because they are bound to one another for life by flesh. Busk’s figures are brought into co-dependency via urchin-like bodies and yearning postures whose intertwining co-dependencypoint towards a form of fatalism. The rendering in thin washes of translucent layers lends the paintings an already ‘absorbed’ feel somewhat reminiscent of faded illustrations or frescos. As with the ceramics, there is the sense that what we are seeing here is not original, but rather a version of the figures that has faded over time, or that has literally lost something to become a degraded impression of a once brighter self. It is unsurprising therefore that the arbitrator of this downward spiral is clued into using imagery such as a serpent – like red frame that surrounds them.
Titled You Must Lead the Dance With Me, the Letter of Indulgence Does Not Help You, large woodcut portrays a pied piper. It becomes clear that what is being paraded across the works is a far cry from the gentlemen they may have once been. These are damaged beings returning to the stage as if having been called up. A large ceramic in the shape of a temple-like bell suggests that this damage might betray more sinister roots, against which, the irony of titling the show ‘Gentlemen’ seems all the more acerbic.
Peter Linde Busk (Copenhagen, Denmark, 1973, lives and works in Berlin). Selected solo shows: 2015 Gentlemen, Monitor, Rome; 2013 Point D’Appui, Josh Lilley Gallery, London; The Carollers of Kolbijk, Galerie Bo Bjerggaard, Copenhagen; The Staging Area, Holstebro Kunstmuseum, Holstebro 2012 No Pasaran , Monitor, Rome 2011: “Liste”, Basel, Rob Tufnell gallery; “Currahee”, Rob Tufnell at Sutton Lane 1, London; 2010 “Bold as a lunatic troupe of demons in drunken parade”, Christina Wilson Gallery, Copenhagen; 2007: “Peter Linde Busk”, Ancient and Modern, London; 2006: “Come at the king, you best not miss”, Christina Wilson Gallery, Copenhagen.
Selected group shows: 2014 New Hells, Derek Eller, NY; 2013 Post Post Anxiety, International Art Objects Galleries, Los Angeles; Le Ragioni della Pittura. Esiti e prospettive di un medium, Palazzo De Sanctis, Castelbasso, (Teramo), Italy; Chicken or Beef?, The Hole, New York; La Figurazione Inevitabile,Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato (Italy) 2012 Murder Ink, Der Grieche, Berlin; Unknown Paintings, Emil Holmer, Anders Kjellesvik, Peter Linde Busk, Christof Mascher and Aaron Spangler, Gallerie Michael Janssen, Berlin 2011 Berlin Voyage to the beautiful self, Grafikernes Hus, Copenhagen Glaskunst – fra Per Hebsgaards værksted, Kastrupgårdsamlingen, Copenhagen Air De Paris, Gallery Christina Wilson, Copenhagen Stories Being Told, BolteLang gallery, Zurich2 010: “Newspeak: British Art Now”, Saatchi Gallery, London; “The Long Dark”, curated by M. Cotton, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge; 2009: “Studio Voltaire presents”, curated by S. Mccrory, Boltelang Gallery, Zurich.
Gentlemen
14 February - 21 March 2015
Monitor is delighted to announce the opening of its second solo show devoted to the work of Peter Linde Busk, who just last year was included in the 100 Painters of Tomorrow catalogue of artists selected by Kurt Beers and published by Thames and Hudson. With the somewhat ironic title Gentlemen, the show orchestrates several components of Busk’s practice to include new large-scale paintings on linen, ceramics, lithographs and etchings.
Busk’s new ceramics are presented standing on butcher’s blocks. Glazed white, these distorted, twisted and pocked forms appear more like haunted versions of figuration than the thing itself. There is the sense that they might be battle-scarred; a motif carried through to the butcher’s blocks-cum-plinths whose surfaces can never be fully rid of the violence formerly staged there. An allusion to past injury that is only brought into sharper relief when noting that the blocks themselves have been adapted with prosthesis-like leg extensions. Reminiscent also of hooves also, these extensions lend the blocks a bestial quality, albeit one that has endured considerable pain.
The brutalised appearance of Busk’s ceramics thematise the process of beating, moulding and firing by which they are made. He presents us with mournful and visibly agonized relics that have both literally and metaphorically been to hell and back. In this sense, his series of four head-like reliefs, displayed here upon decorated oval grounds, become achingly macabre trophies.
An Assyrian proverb Busk had in mind during the completion process sheds greater light on the works. ‘Fear the Goat from the Front, the Horse from the Rear, and the Man from All Sides’. Although the proverb reads somewhat like a warning (one gleaned from the kind of wisdom that only experience can bring), the works in the show provide the evidence as to why such caution might be uttered.
To wit, his new series of paintings offer a glimpse into how a world oblivious to such prudence might look. Busk has traditionally borrowed elements from the theatre such as pathetic fallacy: intense atmospheric patterning conveys psychological states and here the figures are contained and isolated within a world of sinuous imagery. Each painting in this new series depicts the relationship: between man and woman. Just like Adam and Eve In Milton’s Paradise Lost Adam follows Eve are led into sin because they are bound to one another for life by flesh. Busk’s figures are brought into co-dependency via urchin-like bodies and yearning postures whose intertwining co-dependencypoint towards a form of fatalism. The rendering in thin washes of translucent layers lends the paintings an already ‘absorbed’ feel somewhat reminiscent of faded illustrations or frescos. As with the ceramics, there is the sense that what we are seeing here is not original, but rather a version of the figures that has faded over time, or that has literally lost something to become a degraded impression of a once brighter self. It is unsurprising therefore that the arbitrator of this downward spiral is clued into using imagery such as a serpent – like red frame that surrounds them.
Titled You Must Lead the Dance With Me, the Letter of Indulgence Does Not Help You, large woodcut portrays a pied piper. It becomes clear that what is being paraded across the works is a far cry from the gentlemen they may have once been. These are damaged beings returning to the stage as if having been called up. A large ceramic in the shape of a temple-like bell suggests that this damage might betray more sinister roots, against which, the irony of titling the show ‘Gentlemen’ seems all the more acerbic.
Peter Linde Busk (Copenhagen, Denmark, 1973, lives and works in Berlin). Selected solo shows: 2015 Gentlemen, Monitor, Rome; 2013 Point D’Appui, Josh Lilley Gallery, London; The Carollers of Kolbijk, Galerie Bo Bjerggaard, Copenhagen; The Staging Area, Holstebro Kunstmuseum, Holstebro 2012 No Pasaran , Monitor, Rome 2011: “Liste”, Basel, Rob Tufnell gallery; “Currahee”, Rob Tufnell at Sutton Lane 1, London; 2010 “Bold as a lunatic troupe of demons in drunken parade”, Christina Wilson Gallery, Copenhagen; 2007: “Peter Linde Busk”, Ancient and Modern, London; 2006: “Come at the king, you best not miss”, Christina Wilson Gallery, Copenhagen.
Selected group shows: 2014 New Hells, Derek Eller, NY; 2013 Post Post Anxiety, International Art Objects Galleries, Los Angeles; Le Ragioni della Pittura. Esiti e prospettive di un medium, Palazzo De Sanctis, Castelbasso, (Teramo), Italy; Chicken or Beef?, The Hole, New York; La Figurazione Inevitabile,Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato (Italy) 2012 Murder Ink, Der Grieche, Berlin; Unknown Paintings, Emil Holmer, Anders Kjellesvik, Peter Linde Busk, Christof Mascher and Aaron Spangler, Gallerie Michael Janssen, Berlin 2011 Berlin Voyage to the beautiful self, Grafikernes Hus, Copenhagen Glaskunst – fra Per Hebsgaards værksted, Kastrupgårdsamlingen, Copenhagen Air De Paris, Gallery Christina Wilson, Copenhagen Stories Being Told, BolteLang gallery, Zurich2 010: “Newspeak: British Art Now”, Saatchi Gallery, London; “The Long Dark”, curated by M. Cotton, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge; 2009: “Studio Voltaire presents”, curated by S. Mccrory, Boltelang Gallery, Zurich.