Friday May 28, Magnus Fisker's exhibition “Lad os svømme i denne flod af lidelse og lykke” opens in the HAG project room 

Magnus Fisker (b. 1992, Ringsted) is a student at The Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. Fisker is a painter above all, but he also experiments with sculptures in different organic materials such as wood.

To Fisker, the act of painting is itself a continuous process; every artwork a sentence in an ongoing story about his artistic practice. Fisker’s narrative is about existing as an entity in the world, and what it means to be a part of an all-encompassing circuit: To be a piece of biology and to be connected to the surrounding environment. For that same reason, the genesis, existence, and frailty of life is also a central theme in his works.

To paint is to put the paint brush to the canvas and drag it along. A brush stroke is born, evolves and dies. Within this cycle life exists. It may happen at different speeds, might be defined by various levels of pain and joy. You can roll the brush between your fingers, make it jump like a deer on a meadow. A painting is nothing but a series of brush strokes that follow each another, countless rows of reactions upon actions.

Fisker’s paintings exist as a conflict between dramatic and meticulous brush strokes, where the dreams and anxieties of the artist materialize in liquid landscapes. Although the motives are inspired by the artist’s childhood vacations in the Danish countryside – a fact that offers a concrete origin – Fisker’s paintings also constitute a synthesis of existing and fictitious geographical places that are dissected and reassembled anew. To Fisker, working with paint is an intuitive endeavor that must both seduce and surprise him, because this, as he himself puts it, is what helps him “understand the world and make it tangible”.

During winter and early spring, Magnus Fisker produced the works in “Let’s Swim in This River of Pain and Joy”. The exhibition, which is his first proper solo show, consists of abstract, expressive landscape paintings as well as a handful of sculptures made from burnt wood. The paintings focus on landscapes as both a remembered, meta-physical phenomenon and as a concrete thing-in-itself. The wooden sculptures, and their heavy presence, contrast the abstract universe of the paintings; as creatures that have materialized between brush strokes and invaded the room.

For the exhibition, Magnus Fisker’s fellow student Sabitha Søderholm will present a text written for the occasion.