Lisbeth Eugenie Christensen
Formation Gallery
11 Oct 2024 – 16 Nov 2024
There is something at play in Lisbeth Eugenie Christensen's works, which balance on a knife's edge between the real and the dreamlike. Between the miracle of nature and the synthetically unnatural. The forms float in a weightless space, evoking thoughts of a universe where the laws of physics are suspended, and where otherwise contradictory elements can coexist in a new, vibrating reality.
Lisbeth Eugenie Christensen is a master of illusion. Armed with her array of pencils and brushes, she challenges our sense of reality and our desire to grasp or even uncover the truth. Through drawn effects and shadows, and with a razor-sharp scalpel, the paper and the elements upon it are shaped and cut, making the two-dimensional appear three-dimensional and remarkably tactile. It can be difficult to decode where the paper begins and ends. Christensen trains our eyes by deceiving them—a technique that has a long tradition in art history, known as “trompe l’oeil,” which characterizes the tradition in painting where artists create illusions of three-dimensionality. A classical approach, yet still relevant—don’t we all need to “look again,” look longer, deeper, linger over the work?
In Eugenie Christensen's practice, “double bind” is an inherent dogma, a formal tool for creating works that deliberately contain contradictory elements. The concept of “double bind” was originally introduced by the American anthropologist and psychiatrist Gregory Bateson in the context of communication theory and psychology. It refers to a situation where a person receives conflicting messages or demands, making it impossible to respond correctly without violating one, often leading to frustration or paralysis. Transferred to abstract art, a “double bind” can also emerge in the artist’s attempt to balance between strict geometric or mathematical forms and the desire to express deeper emotions or ideas.
It’s as if Eugenie Christensen has made a sort of “double bind” pact with her works—that the abstract and color-saturated surfaces cannot stand alone. For her, a work must contain realistic traits alongside abstract elements that can both invite and repel. This leads to tension in the work, where both the artist and the viewer are caught between fulfilling the demands of a structured, recognizable composition and the desire for the freedom to experiment and create something more intuitive or chaotic. This balance or conflict between harmony and rupture in the composition often creates a dynamic that can be a significant driver of innovation, but also a source of frustration. In the artist’s pursuit of the tactile and the creation of extraordinary depth, the abstract elements must be flanked by their opposites—the hyperrealistic, the concrete, and the natural. Thus, Eugenie Christensen’s works cannot be solely called abstract nor naturalistic. Through the meticulous work with pencils, creating shadow and thus depth effects, and in the linking of the images' simple and often contrasting elements, they defy these definitions.
With her unique and inscrutable world of motifs and spatiality, she punctures our conventional expectations of a work’s composition, allowing moods and possibilities to flow out through the cracks, so the intuitive, the surreal, the rational, and the contradictory can connect with each other and with us.
Lisbeth Eugenie Christensen (b. 1969) is a Danish artist, trained in Drawing and Printmaking at Designskolen Kolding. Her versatile work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, earning her wide recognition. Her pieces navigate between traditional graphic art and modern discourses, which have earned her numerous awards and grants, including the prestigious honorary grant from the Anne Marie Telmanyi, born Carl-Nielsen Foundation.
Christensen has also made her mark as a curator, notably with the Nordic exhibition NATURE – Home and Workplace, presented in Denmark, Sweden, and Greenland. Her public art installations reflect a deep awareness of art’s role in society, while her works are included in significant collections, including the New Carlsberg Foundation, the Danish Arts Foundation, Vendsyssel Art Museum, the Museum of Religious Art, and the Johannes Larsen Museum.
