Jesper Skov Madsen
Formation Gallery
29 Sep 2023 – 11 Nov 2023
Jesper Skov Madsen: Baked Alaska
September 29 – November 11 2023
Opening September 29. 5-8 pm.
Formation Gallery is pleased to present Baked Alaska, Jesper Skov Madsen's first solo exhibition in the gallery. For the first time, Skov Madsen is showing an exhibition of large-scale oil paintings, where oil paint dances around - almost dissolved marks, that have only just touched the canvas.
In a mixture of neat precision and equal parts randomness, Skov Madsen creates at once explosive and meditative paintings that bubble with energy and contemplation. Skov Madsen creates what you could call sculptural paintings - like a puzzle, he impulsively pieces the painting together. Without a sketch, he feels forward, with changing movements and without a fixed motif, he slowly lets the work take shape. The process is a balance between order and chaos and a navigation of the unpredictable and the controlled. With a mixture of contemplation and curiosity, the artist investigates and challenges the material properties of oil paint in relation to the possibilities of the colors, their materiality, their shape and structure - in relation to each other.
Skov Madsen's paintings feel like an abstract Michelin dessert, where only Skov Madsen knows exactly how much of each ingredient is needed. With a past as a chef, it is perhaps not completely coincidental that the exhibition is called Baked Alaska – an extremely complex and uncompromising dessert, where composition and precision are a prerequisite for the ice cream dessert to come out in one piece. The art of baking ice cream wrapped in meringue without it melting requires excellent timing and accuracy. This is also the case with Skov Madsen's paintings, which balance precision with controlled chaos, timing and chance. Appetizing is not a completely wrong adjective when it comes to Skov Madsen's aesthetics, where a sensitive and mischievous satisfaction of the senses is always present – the desire to touch, taste, smell is almost too tempting...
But beneath the meringue surface, there are associations to the ice that is melting due to global warming. In a world of abundance and surface, the title Baked Alaska feels like an understated comment on a world that is about to melt at our feet – if we don't turn off the oven in time. Skov Madsen's paintings are at once immediate and complicated, full of life and humor and seriousness. They are unpretentious, immediate, and irresistible.
Jesper Skov Madsen (b.1982) graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2017. Both before and after his departure from the Academy of Fine Arts, Skov Madsen has exhibited at home and abroad. He has exhibited at Galerie Derouillon (Paris, FR), Galerie Nicolas Hugo (Paris, FR), Achenbach Hagemeier (Düsseldorf, DE, Pablo's Birthday Gallery (New York, USA), Kunstraum XXY (Berlin, DE), Stephane Simoens Contemporary (Knokke, BE) as well as at a number of Danish galleries. In addition, Skov Madsen has participated in exhibitions at Munkeruphus, Tableau and the J.F. Willumsens Museum. He has also been nominated for the Remmen Foundation's Art Prize. Jesper Skov Madsen lives and works in Copenhagen.
