Leonard Forslund
Forest of Glass
27 Jan–5 Aug 2012
Brandts Torv 1
Odense
Denmark 5000
Kunsthallen Brandts will be showing a large-scale, solo exhibition of works by the Swedish/Danish visual artist Leonard Forslund. The exhibition, entitled Forest of Glass, will present works dating from 1999 up to the present, including several recent works made specifically for the exhibition.
Leonard Forslund works in painting, but moves far beyond the canvas. He incorporates diverse elements such as tin and wood, resulting in “constructed” paintings in which different surfaces and three-dimensional objects are added. This was the method employed in his Wood Nation series. Here Forslund is a sort of pioneer, creating a small society with all the traditional institutions: school, city hall, factory, ministries and, in the work Holiness, perhaps also a church. Forslund’s work relates to illusionistic art but also contains a good deal of philosophical and critical commentary on our Scandinavian, social-utopian society.
Included in the exhibition at Kunsthallen Brandts is a recent series, Human Hurricane, in which photographs of dramatic, man-made events are whirled upward into a tornado-like structure. In his Stream Palisade series, the disasters are natural, and man is reduced to an insignificant element imbedded in a biological system. Forslund discusses man’s role and human frailty in a world of glass.
Leonard Forslund (born 1959) is educated at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen. Since his breakthrough in the mid 1980s he has exhibited extensively at home and abroad. His work is represented in significant public collections, and he has received several grants and honours, including the Eckersberg Medal in 2009, awarded to individuals who have contributed to the arts in outstanding ways.
Mikkel Bogh, head of the Schools of Visual Arts at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, will open the exhibition.
The Forest of Glass exhibition will be open to the public from 27 January to 5 August 2012.
The exhibition is organized in collaboration with Kunsthal Brænderigaarden. A richly-illustrated exhibition catalogue is available.
