Jesper Carlsen: 'Brick & Mortar'

About

“I lick the silicone joints discretely, hoping that no one sees me. I have to find out if they taste like I imagine they will. The joints taste a bit like Ajax and a bit like dust. Not exactly what I had hoped and I start to doubt if they really are silicone or rather some kind of an acrylic mass, which has this completely different taste, and my daydream of the ruinous future of the building comes to an end.”
- excerpt from exhibition text by Kristoffer Ørum

For his exhibition at Tranen, Jesper Carlsen takes the hyper-designed character of the architectural site as his starting point in his sculptures that take on the dimensions and curves of the space. Brick & Mortar extracts the materiality of the sculptures, reducing them to fragile lines. With virtual renderings, shown at screens along the walls of the exhibition space, he adds a draft for new “skins” to the minimal constructions. In Brick & Mortar the sculptures hit their own Zero Point. Ghostlike and barely visible they presents themselves at Tranen as Carlsen gives formless body to abstract ideas.

Tranen is designed by Henning Larsen Architects in the beginning of the 1980ies in Gentofte, Denmark as an ideal niche for exhibition of contemporary art in a very public setting. With Brick & Mortar, Carlsen lets us experience the potential remodeling of Tranen and draws our attention to a possible non-existence of the real.