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Interesting review 3 x Vanity Fair
FIVE SOLOS IN DENMARK
2024
NB: EXHIBITION AT
GALLERI KULTURSTATIONEN HUMLEBÆK
EXTENDED
TO 15 DECEMBER 2024
“The impact is almost hypnotic, meditative and joy-inducing at the same time.“
scroll to read the full review by editor-in-chief Tom Jørgensen, KunstAvisen (The Art Newspaper) Nov/Dec 2024
EGE ARP-HANSEN
GALLERI KULTURSTATIONEN HUMLEBÆK
HUMLEBÆK CENTER 44
HUMLEBÆK
5 OCTOBER TO 15 DECEMBER (EXTENDED) 2024
OPEN SATURDAY AND SUNDAY
12 – 17
AND BY APPOINTMENT
OPENING RECEPTION 5 OCTOBER 13-16
About 40 works have been installed in different spaces at KulturStationen. It’s my biggest exhibition to date.
Some paintings are spanking new, created in my studio in Humlebaek this summer, others have been on a tour of Greater Copenhagen since New Years: Copenhagen City, Tåstrup, Vedbæk, Havneholmen and now two months in Humlebæk.
Works from different series and techniques have been installed in The Long Corridor, the permanent installation in The Conference Room, new works in the stair well and folded paintings in the Gallery space itself.
Ole Schwander, curator of Kunstvinduet (the Art Window), Copenhagen, wrote in connection with my two month solo there July/August 2024 among other things this about my Folded Works:
“In the works there is a balance between the predictable and the spontaneous, where planning meets artistic intuition. It is this duality that makes the works so attractive and invites the spectator to reflect on the many dimensions of reality and our way of experiencing the world. At a time when art is constantly challenging and reinventing itself, Ege’s works stand as a significant example of how traditional media can be transformed and given new life through innovative techniques. By forming folds in the canvas, he not only creates a visually impressive work, but also a deeper connection between art, light, shadow and shape – a tribute to both the simple and the complex in art.”
VERY FINE REVIEW
by editor-in-chief Tom Jørgensen, KunstAvisen (The Art Newspaper) Nov/Dec 2024
IN ALL THE COLOURS OF THE RAINBOW
Ege Arp-Hansen exhibits glowing paintings at KulturStationen in Humlebæk
“A couple of elderly gentlemen are engaged in a round of table tennis, three women of the same age group talk together, while they’re arranging flowers. The place is the multi-purpose venue KulturStationen (The Culture Station) in Humlebæk right next to the station, and you instantly feel that things happen here. Throughout the white painted premises from the room with the table tennis to the basement rooms downstairs the walls brightens up with paintings in all the colours of the rainbow. Wow, is the immediate feeling. This is precisely, what one needs on a Danish autumn day.
PAINTERLY ORIGAMI
The artist behind the vibrant works is Ege Arp-Hansen. When you’ve recovered from the agreeable chock, you quickly realise, that these are not normal paintings. The canvases are folded in a kind of painterly origami. Both literally and in a figurative meaning this gives a totally new dimension to the monochrome canvases. Refined light/shadow effects makes the surface alive and vibrant. Any change of the light in the rooms instantly changes the paintings, and the colours change character like the reflections in a forest lake. Contributing to this effect is Ege Arp-Hansens use of the palette knife in making structure on the canvases. As is his idea of letting the canvas shine through in selected areas. This way colour as well as the base material become ever-changing.
SOUTHEAST ASIAN INSPIRATION
Ege Arp-Hansen explains how he is very inspired by the minimalistic art, one finds in Southeast Asia, in China, Korea and Japan. A minimalism which originates in a spiritual approach towards creating art, where each brushstroke ideally should be an extension of the artists breath and an expression of harmony with the Cosmos. Equally Japanese and Chinese landscape art plays a big role.
An exhibition visitor once told him, how she came to think of the sea, when she saw his folded paintings. If you get this impulse, it’s difficult not to see the meandering folds as waves on the sea or a lake. The impact is almost hypnotic, meditative and joy-inducing at the same time.
The just about 40 works created over 10 years each shine with their particular colour from the deepest violet over radiating sun yellow to a sparkling emerald green with a small intermezzo of leaf gold.
It is quite simply a wonderful exhibition.“
SOUND OF SILENCE
GALLERI NYBRO
SANKT PEDERS STRÆDE 21
COPENHAGEN
26 JANUARY TO 4 FEBRUARY 2024
OPEN EVERY DAY
12 – 18
AND BY APPOINTMENT
OPENING RECEPTION 25 JANUARY 16-20
“It’s a great pleasure to present Ege Arp-Hansen’s first solo exhibition in our beautiful, new premises in Sankt Peders Stræde 21, in the very heart of the old town in Copenhagen. It’s his fourth solo with the gallery.
“sound of silence” focuses on Ege Arp-Hansens unique folded paintings, “ripples”, a group of work he’s been developing and working with over the past 10 years. 30 works will be shown, primarily brand new from two series created within the past year.
He’s deeply fascinated by all the colours of the rainbow and also uses them here, but the individual works are often monochromatic, regularly with the application of only one pigment.
The canvas, its structure and other physical qualities are always an integrated part of his paintings expression. Most clearly in these folded works, where the canvas is explored as a manipulatable material, cloth, matter, which is folded and worked rhythmically into something which reminds many people of the surface of water.
The stretchers profile, form and spatial presence under the canvas is an essential part of the work, not just a hidden necessity. They’re sourced and constructed with great care, before the finished pieces of canvas are mounted around them.
The works hereby moves into a three dimensional space, somewhere between painting and sculpture.
Their expression change radically according to the light, its intensity, quality and the angle from which you look. When you move, you experience how colour, patterns, and glistening reflections arise, change, disappear and new constellations emerge. There is no golden cut. The centre is everywhere. The works seem to exist in constant transformation, but still remain as they were created. They’re all untitled, and thereby don’t lead- or mislead the spectator in relation to an interpretation. In Ege Arp-Hansen’s art choices and possibilities are offered, not one dimensional answers.
Ege Arp-Hansen is fascinated by the small in the large and the immense in the minute, by subtle nuances, modulations and rhythms evenly distributed over the whole surface of the canvas, moving from the totally soft, whispering, over the sizzling, to the very sensual. He’s working to attain an inherent, meditative peace and balance, also in the most intense and colour-packed works.
This peace and balance is at the very heart of his working process. It’s here he finds his inspiration. Going about his daily work in the studio between the forest and the sea. To the sound of silence…
GALLERI KINGO
KINGOSVEJ 1A
TAASTRUP
4 APRIL TO 30 APRIL 2024
OPEN
TUESDAY TO FRIDAY 13-16
SUNDAYS 7 and 28 APRIL 13-16
OPENING RECEPTION
4 APRIL 18-20
& JUULAGER
VEDBÆK STATIONSVEJ 18
VEDBÆK
6 JUNE TO MID SEPTEMBER 2024
OPEN
TUESDAY TO THURSDAY 9-17.30
FRIDAY 9-18
SATURDAY 8-13
SUNDAY AND MONDAY CLOSED
KUNSTVINDUET
HAVNEHOLMEN 80
COPENHAGEN V
30 JUNE TO 28 AUGUST 2024
OPEN
24/7
OPENING RECEPTION
30 JUNE 15-17
Ole Schwander, curator of Kunstvinduet (the Art Window), writes:
THE ARTIST WHO FOLDS THE CANVAS TO LIFE
With an innovative approach that blends traditional painting techniques with sculptural measures, Ege Arp-Hansen manages to create works that play with light and shadow. He starts the work like any other painter with a blank canvas. But what sets him apart from others is the transformative process that follows the painting process. He selects few pigments for each canvas, often only one that, in dilutions of varying degrees, is applied in many transparent layers.
When the painting is complete, he embarks on a careful folding of the canvas, which is done to highlight certain elements of the painted image and create a depth, which it otherwise would be impossible to achieve on a flat and even surface. This technique creates a relief effect where parts of the painting emerge while others step back. Light and shadow play on the folded surfaces, giving the work a dynamic and vibrant character.
In the works there is a balance between the predictable and the spontaneous, where planning meets artistic intuition. It is this duality that makes the works so attractive and invites the spectator to reflect on the many dimensions of reality and our way of experiencing the world. At a time when art is constantly challenging and reinventing itself, Ege’s works stand as a significant example of how traditional media can be transformed and given new life through innovative techniques. By forming folds in the canvas, he not only creates a visually impressive work, but also a deeper connection between art, light, shadow and shape – a tribute to both the simple and the complex in art.
SOLO IN DENMARK
2023
FOREVER AND A DAY
GALLERI NYBRO
NYBROGADE 30
COPENHAGEN
24 FEBRUARY TO 5 MARCH 2023
OPEN EVERY DAY
12 – 18
DESIGN SHANGHAI
WITH YUDIAN ART
8 – 11 JUNE 2023
I will be participating in Design Shanghai from 8 – 11 June 2023 through my representative for China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, Yudian Art. They will exhibit “at the end of the universe – right here” 145 x 115 cm (seen below) from 2018. With about 70.000 visitors this fair is concidered one of the most important design fairs in Asia in witch many art galleries also participate.
GROUP SHOW
UFT – UFT – UFT – UFT
UDSTILLINGSSTED FOR TEKSTIL
COPENHAGEN
29 JULY – 2 SEPTEMBER 2023
GROUP SHOW
ANNABORG ART CENTRE
HILLEROD, DK
17 AUGUST TO 10 SEPTEMBER 2023
THURSDAY TO SUNDAY 12 – 16
OPEN DOORS AT 100 ARTISTS IN NORTH ZEALAND
SATURDAY 2 AND SUNDAY 3 SEPTEMBER 2023
EVERY DAY 11 – 17
PAST 2022 SELECTED
EXHIBITION IN CHINA
YUDIAN ART GALLERY
HANGZHOU
“INFINITY ETERNITY”
PRESENTING 4 ARTISTS
26 APRIL TO 30 JUNE 2022
(extended)
I’m very happy to announce that my new representative for China is Yudian Art Gallery in Hangzhou, not far from Shanghai.
Capital during the Southern Song Dynasty, then and now one of the world’s most prosperous and sophisticated cities. Since ancient times home to numerous philosophers, artists and men of literature who were attracted to and inspired by the beauty of its mythic West Lake.
Yudian Art, with galleries in downtown and in the brand new Tian Muli Centre designed by Renso Piano, who’s probably most famous for having co-designed Centre Pompidou in Paris, will from now on be my exclusive representative in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.
SHENZHEN CREATIVE WEEK
WITH YUDIAN GALLERY
25 – 28 JULY 2022
I will be participating in Shenzhen Creative Week from 25 – 28 July 2022 through my representative for China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, Yudian Gallery, with the painting above: “foundation of everything and nothing”, measuring 145 cm x 115 cm.
Shenzhen, immediate neighbour to Hong Kong, is with about 17 million inhabitants the fourth largest city in China.
GROUP SHOW
IN
DENMARK
MARIENLYST CASTLE
ELSINORE
27 AUGUST TO 11 SEPTEMBER 2022
EVERY DAY 12 – 17
OPEN DOORS AT 100 ARTISTS IN NORTH ZEALAND
SATURDAY 3 AND SUNDAY 4 SEPTEMBER 2022
EVERY DAY 11 – 17
ART TALK
KULTURSTATIONEN
HUMLEBÆK
INFINITY
ETERNITY
BEGINNING
END
MEET THE VICAR AND THE ARTIST
27 OCTOBER 2022
PAST SOLOS IN DENMARK 2022
GALLERI NYBRO
NYBROGADE 30
COPENHAGEN
1 APRIL TO 10 APRIL 2022
OPEN EVERY DAY
12 – 18
LIBRARY EXHIBITION HALL
HUMLEBÆK
5 MARCH TO 19 MARCH 2022
PAST 2021 SELECTED
GROUP SHOW
ANNABORG ART CENTRE
HILLEROD, DK
21 OCTOBER TO 21 NOVEMBER 2021
THURSDAY TO SUNDAY 12 – 16
SOLO EXHIBITION IN COPENHAGEN
GALLERI NYBRO
30 NYBROGADE, 1203 COPENHAGEN
untitled
(so far)
TUESDAY 27 JULY 2021 – SUNDAY 22 AUGUST 2021
OPEN TUESDAY TO SUNDAY 12 – 17
FRIDAY 12 – 20
AND BY APPOINTMENT
IN COPENHAGEN’S CULTURAL CENTER BY FREDERIKSHOLM KANAL, CHRISTIANSBORG PALACE AND THE NATIONAL MUSEUM.
FOUR SUCCESSFUL EXHIBITIONS IN DENMARK IN 2020 – TWO OF THEM SOLOS:
KULTURSTATIONEN
IN HUMLEBÆK
CLOSE TO LOUISIANA MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
origin
FRIDAY 4 SEPTEMBER 2020 THROUGH SUNDAY 6 DECEMBER 2020
Humlebæk, Denmark at the newly opened exhibition space at KulturStationen. This solo exhibition, about 36 works, focuses on canvas format 145 x 115 x 3 cm as opposed to the smaller works shown earlier in 2020 at Galleri Nybro in Copenhagen.
Artist Talks and other arrangements scheduled on selected dates.
Interesting review of this 3 month solo exhibition in “KunstAvisen” No. 9 October/November 2020 (i.e. “The Art Magazine”, the oldest Danish art magazine)
Text translated from Danish, original further down
“origin” – Ege Arp-Hansen solo exhibition at KulturStationen, Humlebæk, Denmark
By Lis Engel
If the experience of the show should be described with two words they could be Silence and Beauty. Moving into this sublime exhibition is quite an extraordinary experience which I warmly recommend.
ABSTRACT PAINTING
Ege Arp-Hansen is an abstract painter who art historically can be seen in continuation of Minimalism, but with his totally own way of exploring and unfolding the possibilities of modern abstract painting, possessing an intense curiosity for colour and media. He creates a host of sublime qualities, which are often absent in contemporary painting. What qualities then characterize the exhibition?
This can’t be answered conclusively, but there is an intensity and sensuality in the way Ege Arp-Hansen unfolds his serial work. He often works in series, often monochromatically, and at the same time with a sensitivity for subtle nuances and rhythms, which can be seen both in the modulation of colour and in the tactility of colour as quality and composition.
THE NUMINOUS AND THE EROTIC
At times paintings hover in a series of transparent apparitions, for instance unfolded in the completely light wall, where you are invited to disappear into the white light and the delicately modulated pastel tones from cool to warm in a tender transformation of light.
Other pictures investigate intensively the tactile and can reinforce the experience of rhythm as a physical quality. This can for instance be seen in the folded paintings and their deep sense of rhythm and movement through folding, and also in works with more pastose application of colour. Here the colour scale span from intense, strong reds, rose and apricot, through metallic, dark and violet in different smaller series and solo works. These are works which might open up the possibility of experiencing the fantastic, the erotic and at the same time voluptuous and totally transgressive. An enormous span and at the same time with a wonderful wholeness and coherence.
Perhaps the qualities can be described as limitless, the eternal, without beginning and end, but also filled with a sensuality and intensity, creating a sensation of bliss, of the wonderful.
TOTAL INSTALLATION
The exhibition itself, experienced as a whole in the raw space, is totally unique in the way it’s succeeded to create a symphony of colour, rhythm, which transcends the individual work, into a totality, where the serially hung paintings create gentle shifts and layers of meaning, which at the same time are totally abstract, but also tuned – like visual music. It is exiting to immerse oneself and experience the span, which goes from the completely gentle, whispering, to intensely passionate – not as qualities, which are separate, but as qualities which are present in the individual work and in the whole as an omnipresent tone.
Ege Arp-Hansen origin Review in KunstAvisen 2020
GALLERI NINA SAMPSON
42B DAG HAMMARSKJÖLDS ALLÉ
2100 COPENHAGEN Ø
CLOSE TO THE AMERICAN EMBASSY
EXHIBITION OF 5 WORKS
OCTOBER, NOVEMBER, DECEMBER
GALLERI NYBRO
30 NYBROGADE, 1203 COPENHAGEN
X-MAS GROUP SHOW
TUESDAY 8 DECEMBER 2020 – SUNDAY 20 DECEMBER 2020
OPEN EVERY DAY INCL. SUNDAY
13 – 17
IN COPENHAGEN’S CULTURAL CENTER BY FREDERIKSHOLM KANAL, CHRISTIANSBORG PALACE AND THE NATIONAL MUSEUM.
GALLERI NYBRO
30 NYBROGADE, 1203 COPENHAGEN
from here to nowhere
FRIDAY 17 JULY 2020 – SUNDAY 2 AUGUST 2020
OPEN EVERY DAY INCL. SUNDAY
10 – 17
IN COPENHAGEN’S CULTURAL CENTER BY FREDERIKSHOLM KANAL, CHRISTIANSBORG PALACE AND THE NATIONAL MUSEUM.
I paint.
Artistically connected with the ancient ink tradition of East Asia, some of my deepest roots are found in it’s calligraphy and landscape painting.
As opposed to ink on silk or paper, I use acrylics on canvas, linen or cotton. And I paint in all the colours of the rainbow, but often use only one, two or three pigments in any given work.
Monochromes fascinate me. Unfolding each colour, each pigment, to its full potential.
Born into a family of artists I painted my first painting at 4 or 5 years old, but later focused on writing. I wrote among other things drama for the theatre, where I was fortunate to receive grants from the Danish Arts Foundation, the Danish Literature Council and the Danish Theatre Council.
In the wordless universe of painting however I might get closer to something I find essential.
I work with my relation to, and inevitably lacking logical understanding of something as airy, intangible, yet always present, as infinity, eternity, soul, spirit, consciousness…
Or rather: Little by little I realised this is what I was doing.
The urge to work with colours, paint, came first. Theory followed later. Not the other way around.
Eternity… the infinite… has always fascinated me profoundly… and I’ve asked myself the wonderful questions:
What is eternity? Where does it come from? Can it arise from nothing? What is nothing? What is something? What was before something? Was there something before nothing? Alongside nothing? What is consciousness? What is spirit?
My paintings are optimistic attempts at finding a poetic balance between matter and spirit, a kind of basic research into approaching some kind of answer to these fantastic, in all eternity unanswerable questions about the unapproachable, inexplicable, inexpressible, incomprehensible, indescribable, endless, eternal…
But first… and last… colour by colour… canvas by canvas… in the course of 25 to 100 hours or more, I create works where it’s imperative for me to convey the ethereal play of colour, light and darkness, to prepare a seedbed for precisely that unique experience the observer or observers have individually or collectively at the moment they see the painting.
An experience which probably has just as much to do with the observers own inner life and way of percieving as the work itself…
My studio is located in Humlebæk, Denmark and I recive individual visitors by appointment. It’s a nice walk from Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, one of Europes great modern art institutions, beautifully situated on the coast 35 km north of Copenhagen and always worth a visit.
Paintings are available at the studio and from exhibitions. Prepaid international consignments are also welcome. With several shows a year I’m represented at Galleri Nybro (est. 1989) situated in Copenhagens Historic Centre close to Copenhagen Cathedral. I’m also a member of “Kunstrunden Nordsjælland” (Art Circle North Zealand) with yearly exhibitions and artists studio visits in North Zealand, just north of Copenhagen.
Representative for Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan is Yudian Art in Hangzhou.
CONTACT: If you have any inquiries about visits, prices etc. please don’t hesitate to call my studio in Humlebaek at (+45) 49190709 or mail email hidden; JavaScript is required. If you get the answering service please remember to leave your name and phone number. You’re also welcome to visit my Instagram.
Vanity Fair, Home Is Where The Art Is… June 2020:
EGE-ARP HANSEN_VANITY FAIR_06_07_HIWTAI.indd-1
Vanity Fair, Home Is Where The Art Is… July/August 2020:
EGE-ARP HANSEN_VANITY FAIR_JULY_AUGUST
Vanity Fair, Home Is Where The Art Is… September 2020:
EGE-ARP HANSEN_Vanity_Fair_September_2020
Instagram Screenshot_2023-02-12 Ege Arp-Hansen
CONTACT: If you have any inquiries about visits, prices etc. please don’t hesitate to call my studio in Humlebaek at (+45) 49190709 or mail email hidden; JavaScript is required. If you get the answering service please remember to leave your name and phone number. You’re also welcome to visit my Instagram.
Vanity Fair, Home Is Where The Art Is… June 2020:
EGE-ARP HANSEN_VANITY FAIR_06_07_HIWTAI.indd-1
Vanity Fair, Home Is Where The Art Is… July/August 2020:
EGE-ARP HANSEN_VANITY FAIR_JULY_AUGUST
Vanity Fair, Home Is Where The Art Is… September 2020:
EGE-ARP HANSEN_Vanity_Fair_September_2020
Instagram Screenshot_2023-02-12 Ege Arp-Hansen