come back – per asperam ad astra
Andreas Golder
Solo show from 3/9/2010 to the 23/10/2010
PRESS RELEASE
Comeback – Per Asperam ad Astra is Andreas Golder’s first solo exhibition in Denmark after the great success of his solo exhibition “It has my name on it” at Arken Museum of Modern Art in 2008, which made Andreas Golder not just a well-known, but also a highly respected name on the Danish art scene.
Indeed, the title refers to the fact that Andreas Golder is now back in Denmark after a series of exhibitions at, among other places, White Cube in London and Arndt und Partner in Berlin. ”Comeback” is also a reference to the X-rays on the invitation which show Andreas Golder’s injured hand with five surgical screws to help it heal. An accident had incapacitated him for nearly nine months. But the humour and irony is evident in the Latin phrase “Ad Asperam ad Astra” which means something like: on bumpy roads to the stars.
Characteristic for Andreas Golder is precisely the self-mocking tone, which in no way seems to weaken his faith in painting as an artistic medium. He insists on its ability to innovate and interpret the surrounding community, the surrounding culture. Which is in contrast to the currents of the 20th century, which sought to declare the “death” of painting. The humour in Golder’s works serves as a strategic lever. With comical motives, effects and puns he exploits the paradoxical ability of humour to tackle the most serious issues. Humour lets the artist deal with themes related to the individual’s identity, our contemporary culture and the absurdity of life – without falling back into the notions of heroric expressions of feelings and privileged insights which have traditionally been associated with painting.
In the work Melancholie Unter Energiesparlampe (Melancholia under the energy-saving bulb), for example, Golder works with references to the art history (inspiration may be claimed from both Pablo Picasso and Francis Bacon, among others) and humour and irony in relation to historical perceptions of the artist’s divine insights are emphasised by the energy-saving light bulb. Who is it that in his search for the greatest insight can worry about the climate – and vice versa – who in the present time can avoid worrying about the climate?
The anti-hero is a recurring figure in Golder’s works. Unresolved projects and grotesque shapes are repeated from motive to motive and this anti-heroic perspective has a larger art historical explanatory framework. Art history is full of heroes, and in more recent history, the painting is the art form which has produced the most. The romantic myth about the heroic artist who creates universal emotional expressions and sublime visions in the confines of his studio has followed the painting through the 20th century.
In the work And God Created Woman we see an example of the anti-hero and at the same time a clear commentary on art history’s sublime vision. The woman whom God has created is not sublime, but rather a monster and God’s success with his creation is arguable.
The grotesque body is another recurring theme in Andreas Golder’s works where the body is never idealised. Golder’s figurative depictions are the continuation of a long tradition which since the Renaissance has accompanied every ideal depiction of the body of a repressed magical mirror: the grotesque body. The Russian writer and philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin describes the grotesque body as a key element in the carnevalesque counterculture that flourished in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. According to Bakhtin, the dominant perception of the human body as a grotesque figure is defined less by virtue of the body’s limits than its openings. This reference is obvious in Golder’s bronze sculptures, often based on the body, but characterised more by the parts that are missing than those actually present.
