Isak Friborg (b. 1995) lives and works in Copenhagen. He is a self-taught artist with an academic background in literature and an upbringing characterized by art and art history. An early familiarity with art has given him a natural eye for the effects of the image, which he now explores in his painterly practice.
Isak Friborg’s works revolve around the intimate and the familiar, opening up an introspective visual world. With a foundation in figurative painting and a clear anchoring in the still life tradition, Friborg works with classical arrangements and motifs drawn from his surroundings. Here, he plays with color and paints animals, figures, carpets, cables, and all the things he sees around him. Many objects recur in his works, and it's almost as if the
paintings and drawings continue into each other and together form the space that Isak himself sits and paints in. Both his paintings and the works created with oil pastels on paper are full
of color - but the colors are carefully selected and never overwhelming. Instead, Friborg suggests light, shadows, moods and sensations through the layers: flashes of sun in yellow, shadows in purple, subtle shifts in the color layers. The paint is thick and the many layers of oil testify to the artist's love for the material and the art of painting. About his practice the artist explains:
“My paintings are monuments of the everyday, of consciousness in material, they are cave paintings dedicated to our anthropomorphic instincts. I am continuously fascinated by the borders between ideas and reality. That being said, the basic elements of paintings like light and color are always a major focus in my work.”
