CDAN examines the oeuvre of Danish artist Per Kirkeby
Per Kirkeby
Modell für Antwerpen, 1992
From the 26th of June to the 18th of October at the Centro de Arte y Naturaleza (CDAN) of the Fundación Beulas in Huesca, Spain
Curator: Marga Paz
A selection of sculptures and paintings by Per Kirkeby, whose motifs always stem from nature (used by the artist as an instrument of perspective in his personal way of seeing the world) will be on display at CDAN until the 18th of October.
CDAN. CENTRO DE ARTE Y NATURALEZA DE LA FUNDACIÓN BEULAS
C/ Doctor Artero, s/n
Huesca (España)
They will be accompanied by a work that hovers between sculpture and architecture, devised specifically to be permanently displayed in Huescas landscape.
In these pieces, Kirkeby always clearly reveals his conception of nature as an outcome of human activity and the importance he attaches to the viewers cultural baggage as a filter that nuances and determines their view of the environment. A series of paintings on slate will be part of this show, an independent genre within the output of this artist from Copenhagen, who began to render them in the early 1970s, capturing on them the iconographic vocabulary of his visual experience. Through these paintings, we can discover the keys to Kirkebys pictorial universe and the philosophical and aesthetic ideas that influence his work.
Profoundly different from his sculptures in both their spirit and formal characteristics, to such an extent that they do not seem to spring from the same artist, Kirkebys paintings may seem like abstract works of gestural colouring at first. Yet a more profound examination reveals in them a structure, a subtle, studied chromatic balance and a more steadfast and personal compositional coherence than the traditional rules governing the practice of painting.
An admirer of Rodin, Kirkeby makes use of a strong expressiveness to imprint his sculptures with the indefinite modelling that characterised the French sculptors works, that non-finite that avoids a specific definition of volumes and instead beckons the viewer to imagine in their mind what is only hinted at in the figure. The scale models exhibited at CDAN were made in plaster to later be moulded in bronze.
In 1973, Per Kirkeby began to design public works of art made of brick. These sculptures were architectural in appearance and can be seen in many European cities; they are now coming to CDAN thanks to Plan. Along the banks of the Cinqueta River there will be a piece showing dysfunctional interiors which, unlike the majority of outdoor sculptures, does not commemorate any feat or prominent person, rather it solely aims to draw viewers attention to the environment in which it is installed. Made of the intersection of two identical squares that generate a smaller one inside them, the relationship between this sculpture (based on a simple geometrical play) and architecture is, despite its apparent structure as a house with windows, merely coincidental. Per Kirkebys goal when designing this sculpture specifically for this site was to immerse the spectator in the space created by abstract shapes that are autonomous from the presumptions of the avant-gardes, from which they could view the surrounding landscape. This Kirkeby work is part of the programme of the “Arte y Naturaleza (Art and Nature)” project undertaken by CDAN to study and promote the link between these two realms. A number of artists (including Fernando Casás, David Nash, Richard Long and now Per Kirkeby) have been commissioned to create sculptures for non-urbanised areas in the province of Huesca drawing on influences from Land Art and works of public art.
Per Kirkeby
Plan, 2009
Cabañera de la Montaña, Plan
Per Kirkeby
Ohne Titel, 1992
Colección Achenbach Kunstberatung
