The kingdom of colour Elysium
where hot sprinkles of sand are oil
it shows the way to a cosmic landscape
above are suns and moons mirrored in sienna
we let our eyes speak
about everything of Absurdistan
people upside down let their ankles float
in the self-igniting gas of dissolved lin
the melted gallop-butterflies have awoken
in striped dots we lie under a crooked tree
watch the smell of Orion’s whiskeybelt spread
from the opening of the opening
the shine is from within inside out on the outside
and all the important redundancies are gone
Maracas
Maracas
Poem by Anne Marie Rongsted Jensen
There is a clear continuity in the figurative and storytelling practice of Peter Larsen, and while he has previously been working in the mediums of printmaking, drawing and ceramics primarily, we are very pleased to present you his first oil paintings. Peter Larsens works greet the audience with open arms, rich in color and playful. They invite us to overcome our cynicism and to join them on an adventure – to put our guard down and lose control. Reverse Elephant is like going on a treasure hunt with a map consisting of nothing but crosses. The strangest things will happen, and while it’s fun, there is no guarantee it won’t be fraught with danger too: Two clumsy tigers cuddle on a plank floor, a man lies drowned on the Milky Way and you’ll meet a speaking jar under a scorching sun... Peter Larsens works helps us understand how much archetypes, such as animals or geometrical shapes, weighs in our mental economy, in our emotional life and in our symbolic order. They show us the building blocks of mythology turned upside down. And how the most important thing about a story, is not necessarily whether or not it is true. Reverse Elephant feels like a continuous swan song, a gesture of lassitude, wanting beauty in spite, as a possibility of breaking the rules and breaking free.
Peter Larsen (born in Denmark, 1984) graduated from the Danish Royal Academy of Arts in 2013. In his artistic practice he embraces various modes of expression such as painting, drawing, ceramics as well as classic printing forms like etching, screen print and lithography. His artworks reference both surrealist imagery and a modernist exploration of playful subjects. The artist lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark.
