INDOC. Documentation Centre about Art and Nature

CDAN inaugurates exhibition and landscape work by Per Kirkeby

Per Kirkeby (Copenhagen, 1938) started studying Geology at the University of Copenhagen, since his youth has garnered a broad scientific knowledge and philosophy. Later he enrolled at the Experimental Art School (Ex School) in Copenhagen, where he centred on painting, graphics, 8mm film and performance. His profound engagement with nature has enabled him to use it as a tool to present his particular form of viewing the world.

As a painter he holds a key place in European art from the mid 1980s onwards, when his painting reached maturity and began to be recognised as one of the most genuine exponents of the new painting that appeared at that time. Per Kirkeby’s work cannot be classified in any one genre. In fact, it might seem as if the chalk drawings on blackboards in the exhibition hall were made by a different artist to the one who created the sculptural work in Plan, in the Gistaín valley.

It appears that Per Kirkeby’s interest in modelling and sculpture can be traced back to his admiration for Auguste Rodin, the non finito that compels the beholder to make the effort to complete in his imagination the forms that have only been insinuated.

In 1973 Kirkeby decided to make sculptures with a little used material: brick, and made the first in a series of architecturally looking “public art” works in Ikast (Jutland) which, subtended by a strong intentionality, have since been disseminated throughout the whole of Europe.

The work Kirkeby has designed for Plan puts the Gistaín Valley on the map in relation to the career of a contemporary artist who has won international recognition. In this regard, what Per Kirkeby has proposed to build in Plan is not simply a physical structure that occupies a place in the pastureland on the banks of the river Cinqueta, but rather a metaphysical aphorism that possesses volume and materiality. That’s why Plan is a work of art, and not because its outer appearance is evocative or because its physical presence responds to the conventions of some aesthetic canon.

Per Kirkeby’s works not only push back the limits of sculptural techniques towards construction, appropriating brick, the core charismatic material of architectural creations, but they also allow the spectator to enter into their defunctionalised interiors. These works neither celebrate nor commemorate events but instead signpost a place and call attention to the surroundings in which they are located.

Nonetheless, this work is already inseparable from the place, and through its openings we discover fragments of Peña Mediodía, Peña Lisa, Peña Cuezo, Punta Llerga and the sky in the Pyrenees, further enhancing its singularity.

Openings:

• Per Kirkeby exhibition. CDAN. Friday, June 26 at 20 h.

• Art and Nature collection. Plan. Saturday, June 27 at 13 h.

More information and contact

• Per Kirkeby exhibition (CDAN website)

• Per Kirkeby sculpture in Plan (CDAN website)

Source: texts, CDAN. The photos at the top and bottom of the page show Per Kirkeby’s landscape work in the Gistaín Valley. Photos by Andrés Ferrer. In the top photo the village of Plan can be seen in the background. The photo in the middle of the page shows Per Kirkeby’s work Ohne Titel (2000), executed in mixed media on particle board, 122 x 120 cm.

6 Printable version              Q Back to newsletter contents