press release
The Danish artist Troels Carlsen works with the precision of the 19th century and uses all the media of the 21st century, yet his work never feels superficial. He creates many of his installations from lifelike imitations of animals, complete with glass eyes and fur, preferring to use monkeys because of the detail of their facial expressions, which resemble human portraits. Behind his choice of themes lurks what could almost be called a morbid fascination for natural history, for preserved animals and insects - which seem to interest Carlsen much more stuffed than alive - and for outlandish artefacts in general. In this way he sees animals as "an analogy of the beautiful creature in search of truth", whilst man on the other hand is seen as "plainly knitted, cowardly existence".
In ‟Man You All" (the title is a play on words from the word "manual", something done by hand) he puts his emphasis on paperworks. Carlsen works on antiquarian book pages from the field of anatomy and biology and draws over the motifs to convey his own viewpoint. With the scientific drawing as a physical foundation, Carlsen moves beyond that first layer and sets up his own scenarios, seeing his added drawing as a window into a further level and thereby enmeshing us in new worlds of nature and anatomy, natural history and mythical creatures.
By basing his work on antiquarian books, Troels Carlsen chooses a reference from the centuries in which man, as the absolute pride of creation, believed he could control nature, create life forms and humanise animals by means of pure science. In his works, Carlsen responds subversively to this idea and in his own way, he confounds the scientific belief of past centuries, naively motivated as it was by the enlightenment. Memories of colonial times and of the beliefs and convictions of latter-day natural scientists are awakened. In the same way that one might call this scientific belief artistic, Carlsen's work merges seamlessly into fictitious science. An ever recurring theme is the discrimination against and exploitation of animals by the human species in its arrogant assumption that it is naturally pre-eminent. In the style of his drawings, Carlsen borrows clearly and consciously from the Romantic era and in this way systematically pursues his concept of spinning out still further this elevated phase in the artistic humanisation of animals.
Carlsen's work is not only visually made up of different physical layers, but it also consists of multiple levels in its anthroposophical and quasi-scientific nature. The subject areas range from nightmarish scenarios which bring to mind Frankenstein's experimental laboratory and the wildly dreamt-up confusions of an Alice in Wonderland, through to the fatal insights of spine-chilling moments of unconsciousness, right up to breathtakingly beautiful scenes of nature. For Troels Carlsen, this is the innate contribution to the endlessly agonising question about the meaning of our existence.
Troels Carlsen (born 1972) has, through his formidable work, created a kind of Brehms Tierleben ("Brehm's Life of Animals" by A. E. Brehm 1829-1884) of contemporary art. His works are on display in a number of locations, including New York, London, Tokyo and Basel and are part of international collections (e.g. David Fleiss, Leif Djurhuus, NovoNordisk). The Gallery Jarmuschek + Partner is delighted to be able to present his first individual exhibition in Germany.