Per Kirkeby

Per Kirkeby Untitled 1996 Mixed media on masonite 122 x 122 cm. Framed. - Traces of studio. Provenance Galerie Michael Werner, Cologne (label verso and inventory number PK 797); private collection, Luxemburg Exhibitions Luxemburg 2000 (Galerie Beaumont), Per Kirkeby, exhib.cat., pl.1 with col. illus. Dusseldorf 1998/1999 (Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen), Per Kirkeby, Bild Zeichnung Skulptur, exhib.cat. p.109 with col. illus. (label verso) “Art created in the image of nature, the artist’s longing for paintings to become like nature with regard to their willfulness, is an essential moment of Kirkeby’s universe. But this is [...] kept in balance by a counter-movement that is intended to protect the painter against the seduction of style and the anonymous enticements of nature. And against losing himself in his art.” (Poul Erik Tøjner, Per Kirkeby, Cologne 2003, p. 59). The artist’s deliberate use of so-called “errors” in painting is his decisive strategy for resisting all too clear-cut classifications. Although it is largely abstract, the reference to nature in the present work is nevertheless directly discernable. In the centre of the painting, set against a dark, almost monochrome background, is a structure drawn from intertwined coloured chalk lines, which becomes recognisable as a branch. The gnarled piece of wood with furrowed bark, overgrown with lichen and fungi, is not anchored anywhere, rather it seems to float freely in the picture space. This branch is a set piece taken from direct observation of nature, which can often be seen in the same, horizontally floating position in many untitled works by Kirkeby from 1996 to 1998. The abstract colour surfaces of these works evoke different impressions of nature in the background, influenced by individual vegetation conditions, light moods and weather conditions. In the painting offered here, for example, the dark brown and brown-red suggest the soil of an autumnal forest.