While Deborah Brown's first Scandinavian solo, Memento Mori, is on view in the main gallery, Danish painter Martin Bigum takes on the HAG project room with a new series of paintings and gouaches entitled "When I Paint.."

Flashes of light. Passionate brushstrokes. Exploded perspectives. Painting that vibrates between violent collisions and intimate presence. Hans Alf Gallery is pleased to present Martin Bigum’s second solo exhibition, centred around the more intimate motifs.

Well regocnised as a central figure in Danish art history, Bigum has been working with painting for more than three decades. With an intense, vibrant and clear imagery, he masterfully captures our present time - the intimate snapshots are situated somewhere between the artist himself and the world around him.

Here are sensitive portraits of people in nature. Here are the marvelous landscapes. And here is the mysterious, often raging sea, inspired by the area around the artist’s summer house in Hornbæk. Rendered in Bigum’s signature glorious light, he lifts the intimate subjects out of the surface and into a kind of symbolic shimmering sphere of alternating rays and life. About the exhibition, the artist says:

When I paint... is an exhibition dedicated to the intricate process of painting. When I paint, all sorts of memories, sensations, hunches, experiences, realisations, conscious and unconscious, rush through my head and leave their imprints on my brushes. If it’s a good memory, I paint with vigour. If it’s a bad memory, the brushstrokes get more brutal. That’s what my paintings are all about, this constant mood change. The exhibition presents six oil paintings accompanied by a frieze of gouaches. In addition, a series of photos, mounted on steel plates, will act as ”reflectors” of exactely this: paintings being guided by good or bad memories.

- Martin Bigum

Martin Bigum (b. 1966) lives and works in Copenhagen. His work is represented in national and international public collections, such as Arken, ARoS, SMK National Gallery of Denmark, Malmö Art Museum, Bibliotheque Nationale and Musee d’Art Moderne de la Haute-Viennes. Since 1996, he has mounted no less than 20 museum solo exhibitions, most recently at Arken, Frederiksborg Castle, Bornholm’s Art Museum and Trapholt. Concurrent with his solo show at Hans Alf Gallery, Like a moth to a flame, is on view at Willumsen’s Museum, Frederikssund, until July 28, 2024.

"When I Paint..." opens February 23rd in the HAG project room, and will be on view through March 23rd.