Kehnet Nielsen

Poets of Troy, 2018.

(Exhibition text – EN)

P o e t s o f T r o y
N o t h i n g t h a t c o u l d h a v e b e e n y o u r s
E x i s t s a n y m o r e

24 November 2017 – 13 January 2018

 

The exhibition consists of paintings made up of text, figuration, and abstraction.
A part of the fragments of text seen on the paintings originates from P. B. Shelley’s long poem: Ode To The West Wind. A long, epic dramatic poem filled with metaphors and references to nature.

 

In the paintings, the texts appear as a form of figuration. As a substitute and carrier of a lost meaning and an understanding of nature as a metaphor for a lost romantic idea and perception which apparently no longer, as depiction and observation alone, has the ability to serve as recognition and understanding between human and nature. Yet form wise the paintings also consist of fragments of nature and figurations as a potential longing for coherence and meaning in a world eternally marked by change and challenges, politically, socially, ecologically, and climatically. However, this sense of loss; that the world is about to come to an end in climate changes and political conflicts is of secondary importance, and would as an artistic motif merely be a tacky and banal cliché. The actual background for these, in every sense, abstract notions and inventions concerning form comes exclusively from personal existential relations, with a particular interest in the silent statement of the painting, and the poetic language whose ability to change and transform and recreate what has been lost in many ways mirrors nature, what is seen, and what is sensed.

 

Kehnet Nielsen, November 2017

 

 

With The Flies

Poets of Troy
Nothing that could have been yours
Exists anymore

Not temples not gardens
Not poetry

You are free
Admirable poets of Troy

– Roberto Bolańo