V1 GALLERY PRESENTS
WRONG - a solo exhibition by ASGER CARLSEN
BODY LANGUAGE – a solo exhibition by MATTHEW STONE
Where is the line – if it even exists – between right and wrong?
The discussion is just as old and universal as humankind’s life on earth. And just as relevant today as it was then, as British art comet Matthew Stone and New York City based Danish artist Asger Carlsen display in two separate, new exhibitions at V1 Gallery. Boundaries are drawn with chalk, only to be blurred by moving bodies, and the gaps that are left, are filled with hope and shattered dreams, deceptions and sincerity, fragile beings and strong emotions, quirky smiles and ambitious visions.
Stone and Carlsen direct the light – and the dark – towards determination and shortcomings, attraction and separation, closeness and distance. Using photography as a tool Carlsen and Stone explore grey areas and hidden worlds in the twilight zone between genre, media, morals and humans.
ASGER CARLSEN - Wrong
Asger Carlsen (b. 1973) has ‘miscreated’ an attractive, disheartening and joyful freak show entitled Wrong. Using alchemy, darkness and an unrestricted imagination he has adorned a parallel world populated by very normal and very strange humans, humanoids, animals and landscapes. One gets the feeling that he – like Mary Shelley’s doctor and other scientists – feels a profound fondness for his creations. He lets the viewer wonder and ponder, simultaneously entertained, attracted, confused, choked or disturbed by the twisted black and white moments that exist outside time and space.
Asger Carlsen does Wrong. Premeditated abstract wrong evolves into snapshots that are strangely familiar and mundane. Carlsen taps into a murky subconscious river that runs through all of us. We know we are looking at a manipulated reality, but it is as tangible as the real. This limbo creates space for the observer’s own imagination and interpretation. Asger Carlsen wants you to wonder at the world.
The American critic, curator and publisher Tim Barber called Wrong the best work he had seen all year. In conjunction with the exhibition, the critically acclaimed, Mörel Books will publish the work as a book.
MATTHEW STONE – Body Language
Matthew Stone’s (b. 1982) human landscapes are monumental and simple, strong and fragile. His mounds of naked bodies are presented as multidimensional beings full of life.
The pivotal questions are of separation and return, of challenges to perceptions of individuality. Separated bodies physically return; placed together to undergo a romantic mutation that enables a metaphysical reconnection. Stone uses the interplay of light and darkness to follow sculptural curves and surfaces, awakening the imagination’s desire to delve into the (c)overt.
It is this polarisation that creates the fields of tension in all of Stone’s works. Our surroundings and ourselves often seem divided into irreconcilable binaries: right/wrong, light/dark, good/evil, I/other. Rather than rejecting these overly simplistic, seeming contradictions, Stone proposes new contexts for their powerful co-existence.
In his performative rituals and collectively-minded shoots the camera becomes a shamanic tool used to invoke and create history, rather than to document it. With art as his weapon of choice Matthew challenges fear and denudes a newly defined optimism that not only sheds light on man, but also on the endless possibilities we are all composed of.
Matthew Stone was recently named the most influential living British artist under 30 by The Sunday Times and Norman Rosenthal, curator and critic, has draw comparison to the energy of a young Hirst. This is Matthew Stone’s first solo exhibition in Denmark.
Matthew Stone is also the man behind the soundtrack of Gareth Pugh's Show listen to the soundtrack for the Gareth Pugh menswear A/W09
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