Installationsview. Photo: Brian Kure.

Press release, June 2020

PAINTWORKS
18.6 – 16.8, 2020
Mellanrummet

Paintworks is a series of photographic works by the Danish artists Jonas Georg Christensen and Peter Olsen. The series shows their subtle paintings made directly on late modern industrial and public buildings in Denmark during 2009-18. Their intervention in the facades of the buildings is discreet and minimalist, and thus differs radically from the graffiti and the art works we are used to seeing in the public space.

Installationsview. Photo: Brian Kure.

Grey on Red (photographed on 18th March). Photo: Brian Kure.

Grey on Yellow (photographed on 25th June). Photo: Brian Kure.

Grey on Grey (photographed on 31st January). Photo: Brian Kure.

White on Grey (photographed on 12th February). Photo: Brian Kure.

Grey on Red (photographed on 22nd January). Photo: Brian Kure.

White on Grey (photographed on 24th February). Photo: Brian Kure.

These big paintings are done in serial and as simple forms, in different variations of grey, white or black colour tones. They seem to be part of the building’s architecture, as they do not try to go against the lines of the walls or disturb the architecture in any other way. On the contrary, the paintings underline the aesthetic qualities of the walls, as well as of the surrounding space, and can be perceived as re-activating the surfaces of the building. The book Paintworks from 2019 is also exhibited in Mellanrummet.

Installationsview. Photo: Brian Kure.

Installationsview. Photo: Brian Kure.

Installationsview. Photo: Brian Kure.

This book is a joint edition between Dokument Press and the Danish publishing company Forlaget Emancipa(t/ss)ionsfrugten and contains a longer theoretical text by Carsten Madsen, associate professor at Aarhus University, as well as an introduction by Claus Peder Pedersen, who heads the research school at the School of Architecture in Aarhus.

Exhibition period: June 18 - August 16, 2020.