Magnus Frederik Clausen and Kaare Ruud at Cantina, Aarhus, Denmark August 25 — September 23, 2023
Magnus Frederik Clausen challenges and plays with the production of painting through a diffusion of the artistic work. In collaboration with family, and assistants, who paint his pictures based on simple instructions, he himself takes on a role that could be compared to a conductor from the world of music rather than a painter. In this movement away from the classical execution of the painting with the artist’s own hand in focus to a more conceptual approach to painting, Clausen challenges the art history’s idea of the artist’s unique imprint and instead creates a social painting that includes more people in its process.
In Kaare Ruud’s practice, found materials such as garden furniture, sheets, withered plants, tennis socks and toothbrushes are included in installations and sculptural objects. The materials, which bear the impression of having been left and then found, without being dusted, stand as melancholic figures in the exhibition rooms. Objects with bent table legs stand animated like humans or animals, with their heads bowing in a sad pose, or lying resignedly on the floor, create connections between the objects left behind and the stories and emotional states they carry with them.
Funding Emotions Magnus Frederik Clausen (DK) and Kaare Ruud (NO)
Cantina, Aarhus, Denmark August 25 — September 23, 2023
Photography: Mikkel H. Kaldal/ All images copyright and courtesy of the artist and the gallery.
Magnus Frederik Clausen (b. 1981). 2018–21 MA from The European Graduate
School, Saas-Fee, under professors Carlos Amorales and Siegfried
Zielinski. Recent solo and duo exhibitions include Castle (with Yu
Nishimura), LA (forthcoming 2024), Billytown (with Jason Hirata), The
Hague (2023).
Kaare Ruud (b. 1993, Gausdal) lives and works in Oslo and graduated with an MFA from Oslo National Academy of the Arts in 2020. Ruud’s artistic practice mainly focuses on sculptural interventions and sculptural work in a range of different and untraditional materials.