NILS ERIK GJERDEVIK
8 NOVEMBER - 18 JANUARY 2009

The third floor of GL STRAND has been turned into an anti-authoritarian inferno of the
senses created by Nils Erik Gjerdevik. In his paintings, sculptures and drawings he
position himself as a form extremist in Danish art. Since the 1990s he has been
preoccupied with rupturing, expanding and commenting on abstract imagery and
samples freely from various strategies of abstraction in art history. His work is
characterized by its fabulating shapes but also by an - in the context of art history –
unconventional and effective use of synthetic or delicate colour schemes.

In GL STRAND Gjerdevik explores the possibilities of spatial illusion – both in the relation
between the works and in the individual paintings, sculptures and drawings. The
installation of the works is compact. Paintings and drawings are placed frame against
frame and a series of sculptures are providing a link between them. A dialogue is created
in the continuous communication between compositions, characters and sequences with
differences, similarities, transitions and refractions in between the works.

”Everything is carried out in a precisely measured relationship between intuition and
control. The synthetic colour scheme of Gjerdevik’s paintings smells of plastic and
Donald Duck, but at the same time demonstrates refined interplay. Hidden in Gjerdevik’s
works are cryptic taxonomies which again and again are challenged by pattern breaks
and sudden mutations”, says curator Pernille Fonnesbech.

The dynamic of the installation is intensified by the inner conflicts: in the paintings we
experience the contrast between compositional control on one hand and the individual
components vivid, anarchistic form with infinite variations and mutated shapes on the
other hand. And although Gjerdevik’s works grow out of an organic process they also
contain a wide range of quotes from art history and architectural history: Ranging from the
twined shapes of Art Nouveau through the spontaneous paintings of abstract
expressionism to the monochrome images of minimalism. Gjerdevik takes a historic
dialogue with diverse sources of inspiration such as the Belgian architect Victor Horta
and the Americans Jackson Pollock and Louis Morris

Nils Erik Gjerdevik is born in Oslo in 1962. Except for one year at the Academy of Fine Arts
in Prague in 1984 he is autodidact. He lives and works in Copenhagen.

In relation to the exhibition a richly illustrated catalogue has been published with texts
written by the respective artists Ferdinand Ahm Krag and Christian Vind and also by art
historian Christian Foghmar.

> GL STRAND'S HISTORY
> GL STRAND'S VISION
> CURRENT EXHIBITION
> PRACTICAL INFORMATION

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