Martin Erik Andersen
Borrowed Scenery
15 Nov 2019 – 24 Jan 2020
Borrowed Scenery is a technical term borrowed from Japanese and Chinese gardening. A gardening technique where a landscape outside of the garden is included as an element in the garden through a hyperaesthetic arrangement of objects, plants, proportions, scales, and lines of vision. A technique expanding the relation between body, space, and vision – in which a small, condensed garden all of a sudden can contain an actual mountain or temple.
I have always borrowed terms as well as materials in an attempt to elastically expand the relation between the physical space and our established framework of language and cognition. The hyperaesthetic, self-reflective, and concentrated form of visual art makes it the place where we can approach the limits of this framework without falling apart. Here, “a something” outside the limitations of our horizon can potentially enter as form.
With the exhibition Borrowed Scenery I intent to condensate the aesthetic in a sculptural form– materially as well as in scale –and at the same time to expand, undramatically, the referential space within the sculpture, to let it stretch outside the formal limits and approach something more general and metaphysical. As a means to coordinate, borrow, and include the metaphysical, the exhibition’s set of references draws discretely on gardening, plants, geometry, Minecraft, and Egyptian mythology. On the material level, it stretches from silver bronze and obsidian, to knitting and swimming pool ladders.
The paradox of the artwork’s affirmative, hyperaesthetic definiteness and its potentiality for expanding our mental imprints is a fundamental drive in my work. This time the emphasis is more on the autonomous work rather than a larger, incompassing installatorial formation.
Martin Erik Andersen