Lars Christensen
b. 1972, Denmark 

Lars Christensen is a Danish visual artist who works in various media and is most known for his innovations in Geometric Abstraction and his explorations into the subjective experience of colour. He is predominantly preoccupied with painting and sculpture, which are often included as part of serial sequences. Christensen expresses himself through simple, but at the same time, complex forms, thereby expanding the possibilities for interpretation. His practice is founded on an interest in the partially connected phenomenological and postmodernist currents in art theory, philosophy, literature, and sociology. Christensen lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark. He received an MFA from the School of Design in Kolding and studied at the College of Art and Design in Leeds.

 

Christensen’s work is a study of painting as an artistic tradition. He explores its formal character and pictorial space, its limits and boundaries. Christensen’s works operate on the border between two-dimensional painting and three-dimensional sculpture, thus questioning traditional artistic categories. Christensen challenges the idea of art’s originality and universality. His works are not limited to universal interpretations. Instead, they make possible a diverse range of approaches and attitudes, whereby meaning is created and developed through dialogue and interaction. 

 

The solidity of his paintings is deliberately deconstructed and their meaning put up for debate through a craft-demanding process. Christensen lacerates his paintings with various cuts and holes from the back, and with force, presses acrylic paint through the canvas. On the front of the canvas, filaments appear organically across the surface. It is the print of the fracture that gives the acrylic paint its final sculptural shape. In this way, Christensen pushes the painting’s traditional picture space into the viewer’s actual space. Christensen thus places emphasis on tangible materials and the work’s outside space. His works are characterized by geometric networks and shapes, often painted in monochrome on a coloured canvas. They are further characterised by the biomorphic displacement of the paint emerging from the surface. Christensen’s works can be regarded as active principles that form their own meanings.

 

Christensen emphasises the object character of the paintings rather than the pictorial illustration. In their simplicity, the works become complex through their abstract form. The simple structures raise questions about the interplay between the negative and positive spaces and the viewer’s interaction with the works in their immediacy. The viewer is encouraged to interact, and thus, experience the specific nature of the individual works. Christensen’s works, the viewers, and space interact in such a way that the works change appearances, and the experience of them is dramatized. One can relate to the works without a unique artistic eye or a peculiar spectator-behavior. 

 

Christensen’s phenomenological practice examines the division between subject and object – between the viewer and the work. Attention is drawn to the here-and-now reception of the work’s form and medium; the specific encounter that enables the subject and the object to interact on an equal footing, thereby breaking down the divide. The viewer is encouraged to experience the work as a presentation and an active principle endowed with agency, rather than as a representation that points to abstract notions.
 

Selected Collections

 

The National Art Foundation, DK
New Carlsberg Foundation, DK

Espoo Museum of Modern Art, FIN

Nykredit Collection, DK

LEO Pharma Collection DK

 

Education

 

1994-1995 

College of Art and Design, Leeds

 

1990-1995 

College of Art and Design, Kolding

 

Selected Solo Exhibitions

 

2021

New Objects, 2112, Copenhagen

 

2020

Solo presentation, Enter Art Fair, Anne Mosseri-Marlio Galerie, 

Copenhagen

 

2017 

Curved By Air, Anne Mosseri-Marlio Galerie, Basel

 

2015

Black/White/White/Black, Anne Mosseri-Marlio Galerie, Basel

 

2012

Reduce/Extent, Bendixen Contemporary Art, Copenhagen

 

2011

White vs Monochrome, Anne Mosseri-Marlio Galerie, Zürich

 

2008

Botanica, Tranen, Copenhagen

 

2007

Welcome to the Jungle, Gallery Donn Roca, Odense

2006

On Between Ways, Gallery Christoffer Egelund, Copenhagen

 

2005

Surrogat Radikal, Kunstvereing Buchholz, Nordheide

 

Selected Group Exhibitions

 

2021

Lars Christensen & Malene Landgren, Enter Art Fair, Copenhagen

 

2019

All About Paint, Galleri Benoni, Copenhagen

 

2018

Code Art Fair, Anne-Mosseri-Marlio Galerie, Copenhagen

Blow, Kunstbygningen, Vrå

When the Substance Controls, Galleri Tom Christoffersen, Copenhagen

Born to be Alive, Galleri 2132, Jebjerg

 

2017

The Brask Collection meets Willumsen, Willumsens Museum, Frederikssund

Unavailable Works, Galleri Benoni

 

2016

Interplay, Galleri Benoni, Copenhagen

Forårsudstillingen, Den Frie Udstillingsbygning, Copenhagen

EXPO Chicago, Anne Mosseri-Marlio Galerie, Basel

 

2015

We Hate Christmas, Gallery Tom Christoffersen, Copenhagen

Hello Abstraction, Charlotte Fogh Gallery, Copenhagen

Greay Gifts of Chance, Gallery Tom Christoffersen

 

2014

Yesteryear Remembered, Anne Mosseri-Marlio Galerie, Basel

 

2013

ZEIGEN, Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen