September 2 – October 29, 2005

Dan Attoe, Hernan Bas, Ann Craven, Ulrik Møller, Iris van Dongen, Jansson Stegner, Richard Wathen, Michael Wetzel


The exhibition New Figuration at Galleri Christina Wilson is showing works by seven young, internationally-recognised artists, all of whom work in the figurative tradition. A common characteristic of these artists is that they draw upon a wide range of historical styles in their works, such as Rococo, English landscape and portrait painting, the Renaissance, the Dutch old masters and the Pre-Raphaelites.

Nature often plays a highly central role in these paintings, although landscape painting has otherwise been out of vogue for many years, being regarded as synonymous with a petit-bourgeois past. The artists also often work in relatively small formats, using minuscule brush strokes. In this respect, they borrow from the easel painting and the bourgeois portrait – genres which have long been repressed in favour of a more intense and expressive (masculine?) style.

The use of such older styles is not merely simple imitation or pure irony. On the contrary, the artists combine historical forms of representation with personal elements and references to everyday life and the surrounding society. But the fantastic and the metaphysical clearly predominate in the works of these artists, who thereby distance themselves from art that mainly emphasises social and political content.

The drawings of Dutch artist Iris Van Dongen have perceptible Pre-Raphaelite influences. Her gently drawn figures peer forth from dark backgrounds, and in many images she includes details such as a sweatband with a skull motif. The skull is both an ancient symbol and a symbol of modern subcultures. By combining opposing concepts such as ”past” and ”present”, the ”figurative” and the ”abstract”, she represents these as fluid, heterogeneous concepts which cannot be viewed in isolation. The American artist Michael Wetzel utilises the painting traditions of an earlier age, and in particular landscape painting, to explore American identity. He says: "Painting in its primacy allows for a sort of time-travel. We've seen a lot of that lately. What I am trying to do is to apply past formalities to talk about a part of American identity that may still hold more sway than meets the eye." The works of English artist Richard Wathen make reference to the bourgeois portrait, with motifs such as the stag by the forest lake. At first glance his paintings may seem innocent and delicate, but by for example equipping the figures in his portraits of children with strangely strained and almost adult arms, he introduces an element of something alienated and sinister behind the paintings’ sugar-sweet facade.

Whereas paintings in recent decades have tended to display a playful lightness of imagery, these new artists combine a strange, oblique universe of motifs with a stylistic ”weight”. The often humorous and almost kitsch motifs are given a twist with the help of small tricks and details, leaving the spectator with a disturbed feeling. American Ann Craven's beautiful, kitsch and colourful birds may resemble an ironic comment, but are in fact more of an exploration of the serial art of the sixties.

Danish artist Ulrik Møller's fine small landscapes portray Danish nature at its most beautiful. His paintings are in continuation of the Danish Golden Age tradition, but there is no actual nostalgia present in his images. What Møller portrays here is neither good nor bad; it is a compressed nature, an attempt to pin down impressions in a flimmering, overcrowded world.

The aim of the exhibition is to provide an insight into what is happening right now on the international art scene. Are we witnessing the genesis of a New Romantic trend that will eclipse social and political art, or is this rather a post-modern paraphrasing of romantic motifs?