SAMANTHA DARLING REVIEWS HOT DANE BENNY DRÖSCHER AT ROKEBY: LURKING FOR TRANSCENDENTAL MOMENTS
Here's a box of tricks waiting to be discovered - the first solo exhibition in the UK by Danish artist Benny Dröscher.At the entrance, there is a towering and totem-like sculpture With my head bent auspiciously over the centre, 2005. It's a prominent tree-trunk attached to the wall with two branches jutting out into the gallery. Gold stars are suspended on string from one penis-shaped branch, the other is less erotic with the same glitz. The strings are apparently held down by two furry looking objects lying on the floor, and looking like a couple of over-fluffy dogs.
At the back of the room there's a painting - Lurking for transcendental moments (2) (100 x 120cm). There are dark blue and purple hues at the top right-hand corner, which seem to breathe their way across the canvas, exhaling into a lighter, softer blend with the feeling of an autumn sky in the afternoon. The black birds that perch upon a twisted black vine at the top of the canvas are balanced by a family of finches and sparrow-like birds nestling on a healthier-looking branch at the bottom. The painting suggests the contrasts of light and dark, night and day.
There is a sublime balance and flow to Benny Dröscher’s work; everything gravitates in a clockwise motion like a circle of life. In each painting there is a large circle of white or orange suggesting a sun or moon.
The gallery's mezzanine has an abandoned Christmas-tree leaning in the left-hand corner of what could almost be a loft space. A label hangs from the bare, packed-up tree In my family tradition did not amount to much (250 x 50 x 50cm). The comical gesture of the tree is tangled with a feeling of sadness and isolation - Christmas can be a very difficult time for some, and this kitschy, superficial commodity is used each year to signify what should be a religious time.
There is an overwhelming sense of a hidden visual code to the paintings. Lurking for transcendental moments (4) (95 x 145cm) is adjacent to Lurking for transcendental moments (3) (70 x 95cm). Like ping-pong for the eyes, it is almost impossible to view one painting without casting the eye back to the other - there is something about no 4 that frustrates the senses. In the middle of the canvas, the signature circle of bright orange radiates, and a small owl is perched upon a twisted branch, its eyes masked by a blunt stroke of black paint. To the right of the painting, in the distance, is a small ghostly-looking wood of greys and wispy purples. A haunting dark sky looms above it. This is not a pleasant place.
The painting is a dreamscape, a recognisable force from the deepest state of sleep, the one where everything is blurred when we try to make sense upon waking. The dream-like quality is marred by the sinister twist that Benny Dröscher catches with just the right amount of balance; without closer inspection the viewer could miss it. It is where his subtlety lies - the paintings drag you in as the mind starts to unravel the coding. Birds, branches, dark and light - energy comes flooding through. Each painting has a black hole that escapes into another dimension. In Lurking for transcendental moments (4), the dimension is space - smuggled between the embrace of two branches is a peep-hole into a world beyond. For a moment the meaning feels close, then it slips away. You look to the neighbouring painting for the answers. Lurking for transcendental moments (3) is a much lighter dreamscape. A tree, seen from the ground, sits on the left-hand side. This is a daydream moment - pastel-coloured butterflies flutter over the width of the white canvas, but smudges of random paint that simply blend into the composition signify that not all is at seems. This is not an exhibition to experience stoned - you'd never leave, and you'd be convinced that you'd learnt the meaning of life.