Looking at me looking at you

Arden Asbæk Gallery is excited to be relaunching as a contemporary art space, presenting new and emerging talents, formats and ideas. This will be done through its new exhibition concept PLATFORM, in which handpicked artists within all genres and media will be exhibiting quarterly in the upstairs project space.

Looking at me looking at you brings the viewer into focus through three intimate and challenging projects. These projects zero in on not only the body and the depiction of the body, but also on how we experience and involve ourselves in images that demand our participation in both their concept and form.

Caroline H. Thon’s series Manscapes presents a depiction of the male body not often seen in neither art history nor in popular culture. As American essayist Siri Hustvedt writes: “The history of art is full of women lying around naked for erotic consumption by men”, but on these oil paintings, men lie sprawled out as a soft and naked landscapes on the large raw canvases, seemingly undisturbed by the viewer’s gaze. The works are equally humoristic as they are erotic in their way of confronting us with the immediate ambivalence of what could be considered “the new female gaze”, where the objectified becomes the objectifier.

In the video installation Physical Status Report, Luna Scales confronts us with the gap between what we are seeing and what we think we are seeing. The backdrop is a rich black color and a stark contrast to Scales’ naked and marble-like skin. In this way, Scales knowingly uses references to classical art history as well as to intersectional feminism of the 21st century. The video examines the inherent power of the language that is used to both describe and review the body; a language that is institutionalized by public authorities through assessment reports and medical journals. Scales aims to criticize a use of words that can affect our view and understanding of both others and ourselves by creating a universal narrative based on her own story.

At first glance Josefine Winding’s concrete sculptures appear as the diametrical opposites to both Thon’s and Scales’ soft and fleshly universes. But these geometrical sculptures, in various sizes and shapes, stand as their own landscape that both casts shadows and lets light break through, appearing equally voluminous and airy. Some of the sculptures appear almost anthropomorph, and Winding explains how their creation is much like giving shape to a body with all its curves and cavities. Winding works intuitively with finding balance in the asymmetrical, making the works appear both crooked, unusual and interfering as well as simplistic, honest and harmonious.