PER KIRKEBY LAWRENCE WEINER, 2015.

Per Kirkeby and Lawrence Weiner have known each other for many years. The idea of making a collaborative work and an exhibition together already evolved in the mid eighties, but due to practical reasons the project was not realized back then. Last year during the fall, the idea returned to us in a new form, and we decided together with the artists that now was the time to make it happen. In other words, it is an exhibition with a long history that is now suddenly becoming a reality.

At the exhibition Per Kirkeby is showing two brick works built directly within the gallery space. This is the first presentation of Kirkeby’s brick objects inside a gallery in Denmark. One work is a tall column with a deep niche, a black line or a “metaphysical shadow” running vertically through it. The design of the column refers to an identical model built in the garden behind Kirkeby’s studio at Læsø in the early eighties, but in this new context the column is realized as a free standing autonomous work. The other piece is a monumental quadrangular block, an open/closed building or, if you will, a hollow slightly rotten tree. This new installation is made in collaboration with Lawrence Weiner, who has contributed with texts across the inner and outer brick walls, so that words, matter and space overlap and transform the whole. Lawrence Weiner is also showing two other textbased sculptures made site specifically for the gallery space.

Per Kirkeby (DK, 1938) was represented by the gallery from 1980 to 1997. Important exhibitions in collaboration with the gallery include the showing of Kirkeby’s collected bronze sculptures at Den Frie Udstillingsbygning in 1985 and the solo exhibition Nye Malerier in 1995, which included the painting “Vinterbillede”, a ground-breaking work in Kirkeby’s oevre and now part of the collection at Statens Museum for Kunst. Per Kirkeby’s first brick objects were made in the mid sixties at Eks-Skolen, while the first outdoor brick work was “Huset” constructed in Ikast, Denmark in 1973. Since then his brick sculptures has been realized many places around Europe and Denmark.

Lawrence Weiner (USA, 1942) has worked with the gallery for several decades with solo exhibitions in 1991 and 2003. Lawrence Weiner has been one of the major figures in conceptual art since the 1960’s and a pioneer in his use of text as a sculptural material. He has also made many works using non-institutional forms such as film, video and CDs. Important international exhibition of Weiner’s work include Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, IVAM, Valencia and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. He is represented in museums all over the world.