White Cube Bermondsey is pleased to present Sergej Jensen’s first solo exhibition in London in eight years, debuting a suite of new paintings alongside works made over the past two decades.
Born in Maglegaard, Denmark in 1973, Jensen lives and works in Berlin, Cologne and New York, and is best known for his fabric works which waver between painted abstraction and legibility. Made using a variety of textiles, including burlap, linen, silk and wool, Jensen’s process has been described as ‘painting without paint’.
In the new series ‘Shadow Paintings’, Jensen turns to the medium of oil paint. Installed as one continuous frieze around the walls of the gallery space, the paintings feature loose, gestural marks and shadowy elemental forms, echoing the sewn geometries of the artist’s textile work.
Drawing from Andy Warhol’s Shadows (1978–79), a single multi-part installation hung around the perimeter of a room, the artist’s ‘Shadow Paintings’ present a rhythm in their arrangement that alternates between emptiness and condensation. Providing the framework for Jensen’s abstractions, Warhol’s work is treated here as a ‘genre’ within painting. Transcending the work itself, Jensen’s assessment of the medium of painting encompasses the installation site as well as the wider circulation and exchange of the art object. As curator Stéphanie Moisdon states: ‘A deadpan desecrator and a silent spectator devoid of any intent to destroy or deconstruct, Jensen observes the ephemeral, intermediate nature of these things that are extracted from a dual, irreconcilable space between art history and a non-heroic, post punk counter-culture.’
A solo exhibition by artist Tiona Nekkia McClodden will run concurrently at White Cube Bermondsey.
%202004%20(medium%20res).jpeg)
.jpeg)
%201.jpeg)
