Martin Bigum
The Bubbles (and the Jelly Fish!) in the Stream
Period: 25/10 – 30/11
Opening: Friday 25/10 at 17-19
Opening hours: Tuesday – Friday at 11-17.30, Saturday at 11-15
Charlotte Fogh Gallery is delighted to present Martin Bigum’s exhibition, “The Bubbles (and the Jelly Fish!) in the Stream”, which is the artist’s third solo exhibition in the gallery. The exhibition shows new paintings, a series of palette drawings and a jelly fish sculpture, which stretches its threads into art history and to Martin Bigum’s own work as an artist.
A very personal approach and an awareness of art historical references have dominated Bigum’s work production over the past decade. This have led to extensive dialogue exhibitions with some of the great artist in Danish art. Most recently in dialogue with the Funen painter Peter Larsen on Faaborg Art Museum and subsequently J. F. Willumsen, which can currently be seen at Randers Art Museum.
At the exhibition “The Bubbles (and the Jelly Fish!) in the Stream” the dialogue is expanded in a larger perspective and includes both inspiration and scenes from Martin Bigum’s private life with a preoccupation with the currents that characterize our time. The motif world is characterized by women and children and instantly points in a more sensitive and symbolic direction. We meet the teenagers in their own bubble glued to their mobile phones, but in a scenario that brings to mind L.A. Ring. The mother’s happiness and pride over the desired child in a Willum-esque dizzying perspective, the pensive writer who brings to mind the symbolists of the interwar period such as Otto Dix. But the exhibition’s large central work turns any romantic notions upside down. Liberated women, amazons, Valkyries and sirens, dance in a burlesque visual rhythm through a counter-swarm of silhouetted man-hunters, and across the paradoxical title, “Common Ground”.
Martin Bigum says about the work:
“In all 82 Art Quizzes I took part in from 2009-19, I was always very loyal to female artists. Partly because in my artistically formative years in the 1980s and 90s, I saw how it was the alpha males who filled it all with their own Top 5 list, and were bought by the museums and got the support of the foundations and the big endowments, and even “De Unge Vilde’s” female painters were pushed to the sidelines. Just as it had happened with the female artists of the 68 generation a few years before.
Martin Bigum (b. 1966) is one of the most important Danish artists of his generation, with a string of important exhibitions behind him in Denmark and abroad, and he is widely represented in museums and in private collections. Bigum’s works can be seen, among other things, at the Norwegian State Museum of Art, Arken, AROS, Heart, Trapholt, Randers Art Museum, Frederiksborg Castle, Bornholms Art Museum etc. He is also represented in International collections such as the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, Musee Haute- Viennes, FR, and in private collections in the USA, England, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Holland, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Sweden and Japan.
For further information, press photos etc. please contact Charlotte Fogh Gallery