Ulrik Møller shows new paintings and watercolours at Galleri Christina Wilson.

Ulrik Møllers new paintings are impressive, technically superior and naturalistic - or rather seemingly naturalistic. Even though the choice of motif may seem random, they are often from within Ulrik Møllers own realm; landscapes from the island of Funen where he grew up, trams from Berlin where he lives. So, although a limited world, it is also a world strongly filtered through the senses of the artist.

Ulrik Møller articulates himself through a naturalistic expression, but the motifs in his paintings and watercolours are all heavily manipulated. The motifs of lake, fjord, field, cityscape, or airplane may seem mundane at first impression, but through Møllers brush they are transformed into deep silence and yet loaded with soul and sensing. Nature, or what ever starting point of Møllers motifs, ends up as something else – the paintings are psychological, but also to a large extent hallucinations. The latter stems from the reflections of the large bodies of water in Møllers images. The reflections establish a parallel world that cannot be grasped, which makes the paintings part surreal, part meditative.

Water may be seen as an apocalyptic sign, in which Møller follows the lead of 19th century artists such as Arnold Böcklin, who painted “The Island of the dead” in 1880. As did Böcklin, Møller uses the indefinite sea and sky as a metaphor for the transitory nature of human life.

So Ulrik Møller insists that these well known themes remain as important as ever – to him and others in our time. And in fact the images do grow on the modern person: we still relate to water and weather, heaven and hell.



The images appear naturalistic, but they are also something entirely different.