Idylle oubliée — Maria Lund Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: June 26 → September 6, 2014

This exhibition is dedicated to Kjell Nupen, a Norwegian artist with whom the gallery collaborated since 1999. Kjell Nupen left us too early, last March, at the age of 57.

Forgotten Idyll (Glemt idyl), a monumental work by the artist created in 2001, was the starting point of this eponymous exhibition. In this painting, dark shutters, with roughly sketched slabs, open up on a chapel basking in the golden light of dusk. The beauty revealed in this composition, which veers toward abstraction, offers a suspended moment both close and far, without a day, nor a year. The work is caught in a struggle between the visible and the matter that composes or decomposes itself: birth, formation and potential disappearing are evoked. The half-open shutters are a recurrent theme in Kjell Nupen’s work. His work is made of a sign and pattern vocabulary that has established itself with time and which meaning has continued to evolve through subtle manipulations of composition and matter. In the artist’s neoromantic world, the tension between structure and letting go is always underlying; the visible landscape and nature are not the real topic.

The works of six artists deploy themselves around the theme of the Forgotten idyll :

Madhat Kakei

Madhat Kakei (born in Irak in 1958), offers a series of monochrome canvases, born from the superimposition of dozens of paint layers, from which we can read the nuances, the number and the thickness on the edges of the work of art. Here, it is about covering. The work of Madhat Kakei was figurative for a long time, mostly narrating tragic events, which his people the Kurds was the victim of. The day he entirely covered up a painting with a layer of monochrome color he felt an immense relief and figuration made way to a work of art composed of light and strata of time.

Madhat Kakei, Sans titre, 2014 Acrylic on canvas — 31 × 24 cm Courtesy of the artist & Galerie Maria Lund, Paris

Lee Jin-Woo

Lee Jin-Woo (born in South Korea in 1959) is also presenting a new series of works where one perceives rather than actually sees the colours and drawings: the artist superimposes dozens of Hanji paper sheets — a Korean paper extremely thin and semi-transparent-and deposits pigments and charcoal between the layers. With this extremely minute technique, he creates a three-dimensional work, in which we can contemplate the changes in nuances with the light, the appearances and disappearances of shapes in the depth of the paper.

Jin Woo Lee, Sans titre, 2014 Pigments, chacoal and hanji paper — 48 × 82 cm Courtesy of the artist & Galerie Maria Lund, Paris

Didier Boussarie

The artist Didier Boussarie (born in France in 1958) continues to explore the almost unreal fabric of spider webs. He deposits them in double-glazed boxes with butterflies, leaving to our imagination whether the insects are prisoners or explorers of these beautifully fragile meshes. The spiders’ delicate weavings have also inspired paintings in which dots linked to each other travel the surface to form Variable geometries.

Didier Boussarie, Géométrie variable III, 2014 Acrylic on canvas — 89 × 116 cm Courtesy of the artist & Galerie Maria Lund, Paris

Pernille Pontoppidan Pedersen

Pernille Pontoppidan Pedersen (born in Denmark in 1987), a young sculptor, continues her experimentations in matters by capturing in a ceramics frame a glass foam similar to the foam of waves. The piece, a diptych, is entitled A Twelve Year Head Fracture.

Pernille Pontoppidan Pedersen, A twelve year head fracture, 2014 Glass, concrete, stoneware and glaze — 28 × 28 × 5 cm each Courtesy of the artist & Galerie Maria Lund, Paris

Yoon Ji-Eun

Yoon Ji-Eun (born in South Korea in 1982) engraves, sculpts and paints dreamlike landscapes in stratified wood, recalling Asian woodcuts as well as daily scenes from the Brueghel brothers. The perspective is often multiple, and, from the minuscule to the monumental, different scales cohabitate in a same piece. In her most recent relief, Mirage X, figures unreel in front of a strange landscape from which spurts out a big rock. Does it refer to a dream, reality, a memory?

Ji-Eun Yoon, Mirage X, 2013 Colour pencil, paint, sculpture and pyrogravure on wood — 123 × 91 cm Courtesy of the artist & Galerie Maria Lund, Paris

Min Jung-Yeon

Min Jung-Yeon (born in South Korea in 1979) is showing a drawing in which organic, feminine shapes and geometric, more masculine structures intertwine. In this work of art, Presque un rendez-vous (Almost an appointment), a specimen, fluid and sensual, seems to appear though a half-opened door.

Jung-Yeon Min, Presque un rendez-vous, 2014 Ink and colour pencil on paper — 25,5 × 32 cm Courtesy of the artist & Galerie Maria Lund, Paris