Simard Bilodeau Contemporary is pleased to present Looking Awry, the debut solo exhibition in the United States for artist Thorbjørn Bechmann. Opening April 6th 2024. On view until May 11th, 2024.
Based in Copenhagen, Denmark, Bechmann works daily in his studio laboring over expansive color saturated paintings that unfold layer by layer. His process is methodical, pouring paint over an angled canvas and responding to the way it flows, judging how and when to continue layering as a direct response to how it has moved and shaped itself. This accomplishes a depth that chronicles the passage of long hours with each coating. The paintings come to completion when adding to them would mar the wholeness of their character.
The absence of obvious objects–or subjects–portrays a refinement and distillation of art. In its purest form, it is a state of becoming rather than being, and invites an emotional response instead of a concrete interpretation. Bechmann is in a state of discovery with his work, and delivers this to his audience without seeking to conjure a specific reaction but to show the result of a long meditation.
Bechmann’s paintings envelop the viewer, a raw experience of color as the focus of the work instead of a feature of it. His use of vast, breathing color fields rejects the necessity of explicit figures and forms. By removing the crutch of guiding the viewer to a discrete conclusion, Bechmann proposes more of a processing and interaction with his paintings; the mysticism of each painting remains undisturbed.
The title of the show, Looking Awry, is synonymous with a book by famed contemporary philosopher Slavoj Zizek. His writing explores the theories of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who posited three different human “registers”; imaginary, symbolic, and real. Bechmann speaks of his paintings as a blurring of abstraction and reality, much like our vision blends in our periphery. A rich unconscious world lies just at the edge of our conscious thought; where these meet and melt into a sublime experience is captured in the melding layers of Bechmann’s colors.
Each work is a pure natural state, yet one we don’t experience in our day to day life. The deceptive simplicity is what makes any viewer able to experience each piece without requiring a proposed framework, allowing one to become engrossed in opulent pigments.
– Kellie Marwaha
