CARSTEN BECK’S WORK AT THE MUSEUM

23.11.2022

Vrå Museum exhibits paintings by artist Carsten Beck

For the first time, Carsten Beck’s work is on display in a museum, namely in Kunstbygningen I Vrå – Museum of Contemporary Art in Vraa, Denmark, as part of the “WINTER GROUP SHOW 2022-23”, a group exhibition that will run from 13 November 2022 until 26 March 2023.

In the Kunstbygningen I Vrå Museum's Winter Exhibition, the young Aalborg artist Carsten Beck participates in a collaboration with Albert Contemporary, and the winning work of the young emerging artist Fie Lindgaard "Sensing Landscapes" by UP-CREATE. The exhibition brings the work of the young artists into dialogue with works from the Engelund Collection, which over the years have been acquired and deposited especially by the Ny Carlsberg Foundation, the Statens Kunstfond and collectors. The exhibition also features a DIY area where the public can immerse themselves in the curatorial space itself in the form of a model of the art building. Here one can work with the self-curated exhibition pieces through small modelling waxworks and photographs.

In Beck's works, reality is not absolute, but shifting and full of displacements between form and substance. This raises questions for the attentive viewer: what is in front of the surface and what is behind it? What does he see and in what way? What is his position in this concrete world? In them, reality is not fixed, here the flat surface is dynamic and the matter is alive. Space and depth are replaced by calm figures which, together with the background, create lively changes between the levels of the painting. Traditional perspective is broken with the aim of creating a uniform surface that captures the viewer.

The relationship between the calm figures and the dynamic changes in concrete art was described in 1954 by the art critic Sigurd Schultz with the words; "You stare at these pictures and you calm down. You stare into them and thoughts begin to wander. The mind experiences a clarification and an exuberance, something sprouts and grows in it. You feel the strengthening and spiritual value of meditation. Because what these pictures aim to do is to make matter come alive, so that one perceives the bound forces resting in it, and what they humbly express, which is life - that which inwardly moves in everything and is perfect, however, in the whole universe". Carsten Beck's paintings materialise the critic's words.

Artist : JOHN OLSEN HANS BENDIX CARSTEN BECK LENE RASMUSSEN SVEND ENGELUND BENTE LINNEMANN HELGE HOLSMSKOV JOHANNES HOFMEISTER BJARKE REGN SVENDSEN FIE MARIE K. LINDGAARD POUL SKOV SØRENSEN CHRISTINA CAPETILLO Bárður Jákupsson TOVE ANDERBERG EMIL GREGERSEN CLAUS ØRNTOFT