ART CITIES: Copenhagen-Eske Kath
Eske Kath investigates the fundamental uncertainty that has become a basic condition for our time where man-made technology radically changes climate and landscapes – as well as our fundamental understanding of our relationship with nature and what it means to be human. Synthesizing the aesthetic with the nearly unfathomable conclusions and implications of quantum physics, Kath approaches landscape painting in a novel way.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Galerie Mikael Andersen Archive
The new works in Eske Kath’s solo exhibition “Around Horizons”, were created during the summer of 2023, which globally were the hottest months ever recorded on earth. In the landscape paintings created by Eske Kath the law of gravity is often repealed and the horizon line twists around powerful suns. Night and day and what we believe to be up and down become intertwined in an organic but accurately composed universe of color. Eske Kath sets a new agenda for the landscape painting and thereby processing the fundamental uncertainty of life in the dystopic but hopeful landscapes. These landscapes combine the contrasts between the static, colorful, and meticulously composed painting with the severe physical changes of the world and how we perceive it. This visualization of an abstract universe is instinctively still perceived as a landscape by humanity. Art has the power to process the greater questions in life we ask ourselves in the chaotic world we are living in and will continue to be abstract reflections or become answers to unanswerable questions. In the face of the incomprehensible and the immense – climate change, mass extinction, ecological crises, ecosystems in rapid transformation – art, and perhaps painting in particular, has the ability to grasp the difficult abstraction: viewing Kath’s paintings, we accept the principles of uncertainty that comprise the landscapes. When all other modes of explanation fail, art is perhaps best-suited to respond to subjects that we struggle to comprehend.
Photo: Eske Kath, Around Horizons (light), 2023, acrylic and ink on canvas, 120 x 360 cm, © Eske Kath, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Mikael Andersen
Info: Galerie Mikael Andersen, Bredgade 63, Copenhagen, Denmark, Duration: 23/8-30/9/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 12:00-18:00, Sat 11:00-15:00, http://mikaelandersen.com/
