Ever since Christian Lemmerz first allowed himself to be catapulted from the periphery to the absolute centre of the limelight with his exhibition Stage in 1993, the - in more ways than one - formidable German with the grave face has established himself as one of the brightest, most insistent voices on the Danish art scene. From harsh, anarchist explosions through classicist demonstrations of force to a down-right visionary appropriation of new media: Time after time, Lemmerz has illustrated to his audience the artistic brilliance and almost annoying ease with which he seems to tame, subjugate and mobilize at will virtually any material imaginable. As a figure on the Danish art scene, Christian Lemmerz is a natural-born lead that seems to demand the light wherever he goes - even if he might himself prefer to be consumed by darkness.
Everyone has an opinion about Christian Lemmerz, his art has infiltrated the public space and our collective consciousness, and practically every museum in Denmark has at some point been conscribed to the sculptor's dystopian universe. There's something about the Lemmerzian brand of unwavering determination and zeal that - regardless of the topic, be it Dante's Inferno, the Holocaust or suicide terrorism - ensnares his audience to a point, where we inevitably allow ourselves to be seduced. Christian Lemmerz has a rare ability to grab hold of the viewer and force him so see the world from changing angles. And in much the same way, Lemmerz seems to continuously demand of himself that he revisit the big questions in life - existential angst, Christian mythology, Death - to see them from new perspectives; to somehow nullify former discoveries. He is - if this is even possible in a postmodern reality - an iconoclastic classicist.
In his new exhibition, The Night is Large, which will be the artist's second solo with Hans Alf Gallery following Limbo in 2015, Christian Lemmerz once again delves into Death as the ultimate theme. In a series of 13 large death bed portraits that also act as landscape paintings, Christian Lemmerz explores personal loss and the memory of the dead, while a series of marble, bronze and plaster sculptures serves as a metaphysical counterpoint in an intimate, condensed and first of all personal composition.
