TROELS CARLSEN
TEXTS (SELECTION)
COMEDIA
September 12– October 10, 2020 | Jarmuschek + Partner
By combining antiquarian drawings of human anatomy with vivid and colourful animal paintings, Troels Carlsen mixes the supposedly contradictory. In an associative, condensed and at the same time playful manner, he thus opens up a multi-layered and constantly intertwining dialogue between life and death, culture and nature, history and fantasy in his collages.
Under the title Emerald Rush, the Danish artist has created a series of works over the last few months in which the surreal protagonists share their compositionally finely tuned pictorial space with juicy fruits, ice cream and lollipops. As if weightless in space or in a virtual infinity, a not inconsiderable number of bright red, perfect strawberry slices float through the pictures of the exhibition, thus connecting the central, altar-like collages beyond their frames. In contrast, the sensually curved, large feathers, the fragile wings of butterflies and the bowls, from which soft heads of wildcats emerge with lively facial expressions almost encouraging imitation, seem to be mysteriously fixed in the composition.
Tension-filled, Troels Carlsen complements the patina of the old paper and a network of small, painted raindrops with figures of breathtaking colour and expressiveness. Single pictorial elements seem to interact with each other like in scenes and to be able to tell the viewer a short, fragmentary story. Like an animal curtain or a portal with human staff, the largest of the images opens itself invitingly to the viewer.
Discreet melancholy is to be found in these new works as well as great fun and rich, juicy splendour. Troels Carlsen may have the ability to strike a nerve in our time and to face a new need for the cheerful and beautiful in a visually powerful and sophisticated way.
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ATLAS
April 28 – June 16, 2018 | Jarmuschek + Partner
For this year's gallery weekend in Berlin, Jarmuschek + Partner is opening a solo exhibition by the Danish artist Troels Carlsen, who combines in his painted collages of ancient anatomical drawings a variety of media, visual worlds and temporal dimensions into surreal constellations of figures with an immense expressive power. Under the ambiguous title ATLAS, Troels Carlsen alludes to the exoticism and mysticism of foreign countries, to the drive to research, the curiosity and the feverish documentation of an explorer and traveler, as well as to aspects of nature, culture and mythology.
Human limbs and magnificent animal bodies converge to form morbid yet vibrant creatures in Troels Carlsen's complex new large scale works, surrounded by ornaments and vessels of foreign, distant and perhaps nearly forgotten cultures. Like in a curiosity cabinet, each pictorial element seems to have fallen from its own drawer onto the paper - yet invisibly and mysteriously connected with the others.
Everything seems real, weightless and free, at the same time meaningfully floating in a vacuum and waiting to be put together by our fantasies, stories and individual interpretations into one whole - or even many.