Jon Erik Nyholm | Jord uden himmel
Bricks Gallery is pleased to present Jord uden himmel (Earth Without Sky), a solo exhibition by Jon Erik Nyholm, with an opening reception on Friday, October 3, from 5-8PM. In this exhibition, Nyholm presents a new series of oil paintings all varying in sizes, continuing his exploration of abstract landscape.
The new exhibition by Jon Erik Nyholm consists of a series of oil paintings. Paintings that carefully examine the surface of the landscape. An almost invisible recognition and a figuration that is reminiscent of squinting your eyes and letting just the smallest amount of light in, so the contour lines and outlines of the landscapes become visible.
Even though the landscape and the painted room are romantic, they are also a ghost. A haunted platform.
There is a synthetic entity floating through Nyholm’s paintings, which places the painting somewhere between a speculative science fiction novel and a nostalgic story about the good old days.
The ocean is the consciousness of the entire planet, like in the novel Solaris by Stanislaw Lem. The consciousness merrily creates alternate life trajectories and events, which uncontrollably try to drive us into insanity.
The red ocean is not red. It is pigments that reside in the periphery of what has been named and are difficult to articulate and explain. The sky and the lines of the horizon are like the ocean, fluid and borderless. They become literary and historical in our attempt to place them in our minds.
A painting that insists so much on having been painted that the understanding of it ends up on the pages of a book. One you feel like you have read, at a time in your life that you are no longer able to recall or remember.
The ghosts and the traumas are deeply anchored in the delicate layers of the sky. They live in the quiet water of the stream. They are unresolved energies of the passing of time. They rush through the wind every time the gaze is dissolved and opinions change. They live in Nyholm’s blurred landscapes, without any way of resolution, in a society that is constantly in flux.
The only physical constant that tries to hold the lost souls of the landscape down is the insistence on classical materials. However, these classical materials, which gladly speak loudly about the past, are at the same time being drowned out by the longing cries of the ghosts. Cries toward a world of tomorrow.
Dystopian futuristic downfall. In the pages of a book from the golden ages.
Are Nyholm’s paintings really unclear images of the landscape’s past? Inside the head of a future humankind, hooked up to the mainframe while having its brain energy drained to feed the electro overlords.
Sci/Fi nostalgia.
Text by Peter Larsen
Jon Erik Nyholm (b. 1982) is a Danish artist born in Aarhus who now lives and works in Copenhagen (DK). He holds a MFA from both The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen (DK) and The Royal University College of Fine Arts in Stockholm (SE), and a BA from the University College for the Creative Arts in Canterbury (UK). Recent exhibitions include ’Det Nære Det Sære Det Smukke Det Store ’at 1.SAL.100 (2024, DK), ’Verdant Fade’ at Bricks Gallery (2024, DK), and ’Dear Hunter’ at LIST (2019, DK).
