Press release

ULRIK MØLLER

11 April - 17 May 2008

Ulrik Møller is exhibiting new paintings at Galleri Christina Wilson, which is temporary based at Galleri Christian Dam at Bredgade 23.

We are pleased to present Ulrik Møller's third solo show under the auspices of the gallery. While we are waiting to move into our new premises at Esplanaden 8B, Galleri Christian Dam has kindly offered to loan us their premises at Bredgade 23.

For this exhibition, Møller has created a number of new paintings. The motifs are familiar traces of human habitation in the countryside and the town. One could almost speak of mere unpretentious records of the Danish landscape: an abandoned or empty football pitch, a district heating station, cloud formations or gulls flapping along the coast – all motifs which are familiar from Møller's work.

Ulrik Møller uses photography as inspiration for his paintings. He has taken hundreds of photographs in his home district of Fyn and along the road to Berlin, where he now lives. Cecilie Høgsbro writes: "Møller's works are above all a distinctive mixture of formal painting and documentary photography. In a purely technical sense the paintings rely on photographs, but instead of concealing this alliance, Møller underlines it. He admits of no open conflict between the two media. In this way, the paintings become formal studies with a documentary character. They are neither classic documentary photographs nor conventional landscape paintings, but both at once. The motifs are devoid of people, but not godforsaken, and they thereby become a kind of photographic record."

It is as though a new clarity has invaded Møller's works: the colours are sharper, and the atmosphere thereby seems more definite. Møller's landscapes are also quite simply the landscapes in which he feels at home. They have been claimed and altered by human beings, and as such not abandoned. Neither do these works represent projections of an ideal or a political agenda; they are quite simple cultural landscapes, such as can be found round about in the country of Denmark.

In 2007, Ulrik Møller exhibited in Hales Gallery, London, and in 2006 and 2007 he held extensive and critically-acclaimed exhibitions at the Skovgaard Museum in Viborg and the Nivågård Museum in Nivå. He has sold works to several large foreign collections, most recently a series of paintings to the Caldic Collection in the Netherlands. In 2008 he will be exhibiting at Ordrupgaard, and in 2009 at Kunstverein Glückstadt, Germany.

We look forward to welcoming you all to Galleri Christian Dam in Bredgade. We would like to thank the gallery for the invitation to use the premises.

Opening exhibition in Esplanaden
We are also looking forward to seeing you at the opening exhibition for our new premises at Esplanaden 8B, where we will open on 6 September with a major exhibition of new works by the French artist Sophie Calle. The exhibition is being presented in collaboration with Calle's French gallery, Emmanuel Perrotin. At the same time, in the gallery's project room, we will be showing an exhibition of works by the Japanese artist Yoshiko Shimada.

This year's fairs: LISTE in Basel, ART COPENHAGEN, Frieze in London, ARTFORUM in Berlin and Miami.

We can still be contacted at: gcw@christinawilson.net, or by telephone at: +45 2849 0090 and +45 2839 7160. You can also see the latest gallery news at www.christinawilson.net.