House of Night and Day

25 August – 30 September 2006


It is a great pleasure to be able to present the first one-man exhibition by Danish artist Anette Harboe Flensburg (b. 1961) at Galleri Christina Wilson.

The painting series House of Night and Day represents a continuation of Flensburg's exploration of rooms. Large colourful paintings invite us to enter constructed rooms that seem chilly and very distant from cosy Danish sitting-rooms. There is no furniture, and the chandeliers seen in many of Flensburg's earlier pictures have now been exchanged for glass spheres and glass prisms which hang on strings suspended from the ceilings. The glass spheres make the rooms feel cramped and claustrophobic, while the glass prisms act like underwear on naked skin: tantalising, hiding, and arousing curiosity.

Other rooms are entirely open and easy to enter. Here it is the arabesque-like patterns in the door openings that attract the eye, or the dreamlike portraits from a distant bygone age. Large pictures of flowers can be seen in the background, either as a part of the wall or through holes in the walls, where we look out upon a fantastic garden full of aromatic blooms that have taken over the world.

Where are we, and what is happening? At first glance the rooms resemble recognisable, natural spaces with natural angles of vision. But on further examination they are clearly very complicated, and are not logically consistent in the way that the real world ought to be. Many layers are inserted, and the reflections are confusing.

Can Flensburg see something that we others cannot? Flensburg herself says that she "seeks to arrive at a point between an almost constructive, formal space and a room dense with significance, in which the patterns and light perforate the more stable, stationary architecture and perhaps also [the more stable, stationary] horizon of understanding."

Anette Harboe Flensburg is one of the younger artists who has found exposure on the Nordic art scene in recent years. In 2003 she was awarded second prize at the Carnegie Art Awards for her series of pictures entitled "Reception Room". She has subsequently exhibited at several Nordic galleries, and recently exhibited a major presentation of her works at Trapholt Museum in Kolding. A major presentation of Anette Harboe Flensburg's paintings has not been seen in Copenhagen since 2003.