Morten Lassen
29 March 2011 - 8 April 2011
Art Equity exhibition showing at: Iain Dawson Gallery, 443 Oxford Street, Paddington Opening Night: 31st March 6pm - 8pm
Båndbredde is a dynamic exhibition
by Danish artist, Morten Lassen. Lassen is an artist who is
dissolving boarders both culturally and geographically. He splits
his time between Australia and Denmark enjoying representation in
London and New York, as well as major northern European cities.
Apart from the obvious acknowledgement that his work is sought
after worldwide, of more interest to me is the fact this work has
relevance across the globe. This is not an exhibition that is
anchored in one visual tradition, rather it borrows from many and
then injects an electric quality that entices closer
investigation.
The paintings in this exhibition not only explore the nature of
abstraction in a visual sense but give this aging aesthetic a new
voice. Lassen delves into the ethereal world of the internet
transfer and data communication, whilst maintaining his connection
with oil paint and canvas. Worldwide instant connection to anyone
everywhere at anytime has irreversibly changed us as a global
community. So intense is our involvement with media transfer that
many of our own thoughts are given little more than abstract
acknowledgements as we strive to keep in contact with the world.
Indeed although Lassen is working in the abstract, one can argue
that he is actually working in a representative manner. He is
directly representing the abstract world that we live in today -
not abstracting the real as has traditionally been the methodology
of the 'abstract' artist.
This idea has precedence; the great Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)
in the early part of the 20th Century changed forever abstraction
as he explored colour, line and movement. One of his great
achievements is to have created works of pictorial harmony that
represented what is like to see music. Lassen takes the next step
and gives us a vision of just what the world of ethereal world of
data transfer feels and looks like. And I can report that it is
beautiful. All that information, sound, and visual stimulus passing
around the world in some extraordinary vortex, and the artist
represents in the age old medium of oil paint.
When looking at art, it is important to view it within a historical
context for all art has a genesis. One key influence that Lassen
cannot avoid is his connection to CoBrA. It is interesting to note
that typically major art movements are created out of an urge for
change, to look at things differently and introduce new ideas on
culture. This certainly the case with the CoBrA group (1949-51), an
eclectic and passionate collective of northern European artists and
writers. The group worked in the context of the Twentieth Century
with all its unprecedented change in communication and travel as
well as its dramatic social upheaval. Ultimately CoBrA rebelled
against centuries of artistic tradition, after all in their minds
what had the great cultures of Europe given its people - two world
wars? As Constant Nieuwenhuys wrote in 1949, as part of an
associated manifesto in published in CoBrA no.4:"For
all we know of the realm of our desires is that it continuously
reverts to one immeasurable desire for freedom." 1.
In this revolutionary charged environment the northern European
collective of CoBrA unleashed it anarchic primitive aesthetic, and
it has stuck. From Europe to the USA, from DeKooning to our own
John Olsen. And now Lassen leads the latest generation to morph the
ideas from over 50 years ago. For us living today, visualising and
understanding this intense new world that we live in, creating
harmony in the chaos of the world - we go some way to giving us the
freedom Constant sought in 1949. After all, how can one harness
what one does not understand?
Båndbredde is an important exhibition
as it shows us what we don't understand, and ultimately that will
as give us freedom.
Ralph Hobbs
March 2011
1. Essay originally appeared in CoBrA no. 4 Amsterdam, 1949, p.
304. This reference taken from Harrison, Wood Art in Theory
1900-1990. p.650 Brackwell Press.
