Michael Kvium

Contents

Cover Blindt Billede / Blind Painting, 1991 Private Collection Photo: Svend Pedersen Page 2 Mother’s Tale (detail), 2018 Private Collection Photo: Anders Sune Berg

Photo Credits Please provide with the list of photographers

6

Blindless Revealed.

An Introduction to Michael Kvium Gitte Ørskou

131

Works 1991–2013

186

The Fool, the Fetus, and the

Editor Gitte Ørskou Project Management Giuseppina Leone

Postmodern Turn: Tracing the origins

Copy Editing Emanuela Di Lallo

of the grotesque and emergence

Danish translation XXXXX

of the informe in the work

English translation XXXXXX

of Michael Kvium

Layout and Typesetting Incipit studio, Milan

Brooke Lynn McGowan

Prepress, Printing and Binding O.G.M., Padua

227

© 2020 Verlag Scheidegger & Spiess AG, Zurich © Michael Kvium for his works © the authors for their texts Verlag Scheidegger & Spiess Niederdorfstrasse 54 8001 Zurich Switzerland www.scheidegger-spiess.ch ISBN: 978-3-85881-…..

Scheidegger & Spiess is being supported by the Federal Office of Culture with a general subsidy for the years 2016–2020.

All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written consent of the publisher.

Works 2014–2019 Appendix

297

Exhibitions

302

Bibliography

Contents

Cover Blindt Billede / Blind Painting, 1991 Private Collection Photo: Svend Pedersen Page 2 Mother’s Tale (detail), 2018 Private Collection Photo: Anders Sune Berg

Photo Credits Please provide with the list of photographers

6

Blindless Revealed.

An Introduction to Michael Kvium Gitte Ørskou

131

Works 1991–2013

186

The Fool, the Fetus, and the

Editor Gitte Ørskou Project Management Giuseppina Leone

Postmodern Turn: Tracing the origins

Copy Editing Emanuela Di Lallo

of the grotesque and emergence

Danish translation XXXXX

of the informe in the work

English translation XXXXXX

of Michael Kvium

Layout and Typesetting Incipit studio, Milan

Brooke Lynn McGowan

Prepress, Printing and Binding O.G.M., Padua

227

© 2020 Verlag Scheidegger & Spiess AG, Zurich © Michael Kvium for his works © the authors for their texts Verlag Scheidegger & Spiess Niederdorfstrasse 54 8001 Zurich Switzerland www.scheidegger-spiess.ch ISBN: 978-3-85881-…..

Scheidegger & Spiess is being supported by the Federal Office of Culture with a general subsidy for the years 2016–2020.

All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written consent of the publisher.

Works 2014–2019 Appendix

297

Exhibitions

302

Bibliography

Reality Revisited

Fig. 1 Saturday, 1981 Oil on canvas Dimension unknown Private Collection Photo: [unknown] [MKv-1981-01]

This story begins in 1981–82, when Kvium painted the picture Saturday. At first glance, it looks like a picture of a battlefield. The fallen character with the helmet is reminiscent of the visual testimonies we have from the First World War: torn clothes in camouflage colours; the muddy soil with screwed-up metal surrounding the character; the smoke behind his face. Our reading of the picture is disturbed by two horizontal lines that split the image into three strictly separate fields. Upon further inspection, it turns out that the two lines actually are two horizontal benches made out of tree stumps and carved wooden boards, between which the character is lying. The benches seem to indicate some sort of familiarity, a run-of-the-mill scouting/picnic situation. Ultimately, maybe it is the benches that open our eyes to the actual situation. It is not a fallen soldier, but a sleeping motorcyclist who has tumbled into an inferno of empty beer cans, placed in a foetal position that is a striking contrast to his attire.

The painting is Super-Realist in style. Super-Realism (or HyperRealism as it is also known) is an art movement that evolved in the United States in the 1960s: the stylistic focus was very much on the external, and the motifs came from photographs rather than artists’ imagination.3 HyperRealist works were not characterized by the elegantly constructed shaping of light and shadow, but by a recording approach with a focus on photographic lighting, where everything in the picture is crystal clear. These paintings were based on photographs of reality. At the time, Michael Kvium was a member of a motorbike club and its larger community; that is why his quick snapshot of one Saturday morning after a party, converted into a painting, may basically be an expression of the material he had at his disposal. And yet Kvium chose to photograph this precise situation and turn it into a painting in which the viewer is constantly in doubt as to both motif and form. Is it a historical depiction of the First World War or an everyday situation from the early 1980s? Is the picture unadulterated realism—if that actually can be said to exist—or a rigidly divided picture plane, in which the wooden benches feature as clear indications of painting’s capacity to create abstraction? In other words, is the picture a rendition of something other than reality? An art historian might ask whether Kvium is referring to the history of Super-Realism or to the history of Abstract Modernism, which was to influence Kvium in the course of time.4 Doubt creeps into our encounter with the picture. Even though the picture is not particularly characteristic of Kvium, it established a number of things that were decisive in terms of his later artistic development. First, the persistent embedding of images of reality—in this case, of the First World War—as a backdrop for a motif that is being activated. Secondly, the solitary character in a space as the only element with any implicit meaning. Finally, the unceasing interaction between figurative and abstract aspects, which divide the picture plane into fields. The latter is evident in a very recent work, Vertical Yellow (2016–17), in which the two pictorial approaches vie for space.

[ILL: Vertical Yellow (2016-17)]

10 | Gitte Ørskou

11 | Blindless Revealed. An Introduction to Michael Kvium

Reality Revisited

Fig. 1 Saturday, 1981 Oil on canvas Dimension unknown Private Collection Photo: [unknown] [MKv-1981-01]

This story begins in 1981–82, when Kvium painted the picture Saturday. At first glance, it looks like a picture of a battlefield. The fallen character with the helmet is reminiscent of the visual testimonies we have from the First World War: torn clothes in camouflage colours; the muddy soil with screwed-up metal surrounding the character; the smoke behind his face. Our reading of the picture is disturbed by two horizontal lines that split the image into three strictly separate fields. Upon further inspection, it turns out that the two lines actually are two horizontal benches made out of tree stumps and carved wooden boards, between which the character is lying. The benches seem to indicate some sort of familiarity, a run-of-the-mill scouting/picnic situation. Ultimately, maybe it is the benches that open our eyes to the actual situation. It is not a fallen soldier, but a sleeping motorcyclist who has tumbled into an inferno of empty beer cans, placed in a foetal position that is a striking contrast to his attire.

The painting is Super-Realist in style. Super-Realism (or HyperRealism as it is also known) is an art movement that evolved in the United States in the 1960s: the stylistic focus was very much on the external, and the motifs came from photographs rather than artists’ imagination.3 HyperRealist works were not characterized by the elegantly constructed shaping of light and shadow, but by a recording approach with a focus on photographic lighting, where everything in the picture is crystal clear. These paintings were based on photographs of reality. At the time, Michael Kvium was a member of a motorbike club and its larger community; that is why his quick snapshot of one Saturday morning after a party, converted into a painting, may basically be an expression of the material he had at his disposal. And yet Kvium chose to photograph this precise situation and turn it into a painting in which the viewer is constantly in doubt as to both motif and form. Is it a historical depiction of the First World War or an everyday situation from the early 1980s? Is the picture unadulterated realism—if that actually can be said to exist—or a rigidly divided picture plane, in which the wooden benches feature as clear indications of painting’s capacity to create abstraction? In other words, is the picture a rendition of something other than reality? An art historian might ask whether Kvium is referring to the history of Super-Realism or to the history of Abstract Modernism, which was to influence Kvium in the course of time.4 Doubt creeps into our encounter with the picture. Even though the picture is not particularly characteristic of Kvium, it established a number of things that were decisive in terms of his later artistic development. First, the persistent embedding of images of reality—in this case, of the First World War—as a backdrop for a motif that is being activated. Secondly, the solitary character in a space as the only element with any implicit meaning. Finally, the unceasing interaction between figurative and abstract aspects, which divide the picture plane into fields. The latter is evident in a very recent work, Vertical Yellow (2016–17), in which the two pictorial approaches vie for space.

[ILL: Vertical Yellow (2016-17)]

10 | Gitte Ørskou

11 | Blindless Revealed. An Introduction to Michael Kvium

Fig. 168 Vertical Yellow, 2016 Oil on canvas 3 panels, 70 1/16 x 114 3/16 in | 178 x 290 cm Private Collection Photo: Anders Sune Berg [MKv-2017-10]

Fig. 168 Vertical Yellow, 2016 Oil on canvas 3 panels, 70 1/16 x 114 3/16 in | 178 x 290 cm Private Collection Photo: Anders Sune Berg [MKv-2017-10]

Fig. 3 For Men Only IV, 1983 Ink on paper and photo collage Dimension unknown Horsens Art Museum Photo: Svend Pedersen [Mkv-1983-06] Fig. 4 Den Relative Frihed / Freedom is Relative?, 1983 Oil on canvas 82 11/16 x 55 1/8 in | 210 x 140 cm Private Collection Photo: Bent Ryberg [MKv-1983-04]

In 2005, Kvium commented on his relationship to “reality” as follows: “As a figurative painter, you have to start with reality. However, the environment, whether it’s a human scene or a landscape, doesn’t have to be the key element, since the mimetic aspect in itself does not interest me, but is merely a necessity for establishing a vocabulary that can transcribe what is seen and thus experienced into a painting. This painting can, at best, make reality visible, precisely because it is not reality, but a fantasy.”5 In other words, Kvium is fully aware that the reality of his painting has nothing to do with mimesis—imitation of what is seen—but it’s about incorporating experiences and meanings from the environment he has seen and felt into his vocabulary, which paradoxically requires abstraction in order to create an illusion of reality. It is not the most realistic pictures (in the mimetic sense) that strike us and kindle emotion in us. It is the paintings themselves that confide in us, because they exploit the logic of figurative painting while at the same time displacing us from the ideal world of figurative art. We thereby encounter an altered figuration, which knows both our visual memory and our ability to read abstraction.

(ILL: Freedom is Relative (1983)] In 1983, Kvium painted the 210-cm-high Freedom is Relative. Here too the young artist adopts

14 | Gitte Ørskou

15 | Blindless Revealed. An Introduction to Michael Kvium

Fig. 3 For Men Only IV, 1983 Ink on paper and photo collage Dimension unknown Horsens Art Museum Photo: Svend Pedersen [Mkv-1983-06] Fig. 4 Den Relative Frihed / Freedom is Relative?, 1983 Oil on canvas 82 11/16 x 55 1/8 in | 210 x 140 cm Private Collection Photo: Bent Ryberg [MKv-1983-04]

In 2005, Kvium commented on his relationship to “reality” as follows: “As a figurative painter, you have to start with reality. However, the environment, whether it’s a human scene or a landscape, doesn’t have to be the key element, since the mimetic aspect in itself does not interest me, but is merely a necessity for establishing a vocabulary that can transcribe what is seen and thus experienced into a painting. This painting can, at best, make reality visible, precisely because it is not reality, but a fantasy.”5 In other words, Kvium is fully aware that the reality of his painting has nothing to do with mimesis—imitation of what is seen—but it’s about incorporating experiences and meanings from the environment he has seen and felt into his vocabulary, which paradoxically requires abstraction in order to create an illusion of reality. It is not the most realistic pictures (in the mimetic sense) that strike us and kindle emotion in us. It is the paintings themselves that confide in us, because they exploit the logic of figurative painting while at the same time displacing us from the ideal world of figurative art. We thereby encounter an altered figuration, which knows both our visual memory and our ability to read abstraction.

(ILL: Freedom is Relative (1983)] In 1983, Kvium painted the 210-cm-high Freedom is Relative. Here too the young artist adopts

14 | Gitte Ørskou

15 | Blindless Revealed. An Introduction to Michael Kvium

Fig. 101 Zero Eye, 2006 Oil on canvas 3 parts, 43 5/16 x 129 15/16 in | 110 x 330 cm Private Collection Photo: Anders Sune Berg [Mkv-2006-35]

meticulous figuration. The picture is divided into two areas. In the upper

value in a somewhat more one-dimensional interpretation, so that we truly

area a pair of clenched woman’s legs with a dirty male hand between them

believe that the universe within the picture plane is real.

dominates the picture plane. The red area at the bottom is painted with no

Juxtaposing essentially different elements was later to become one

modelling at all. In the foreground is a metal instrument, whose serrated

of Kvium’s distinctive artistic strategies. Whereas in Freedom is Relative he

grip is a stark contrast to the soft piece of indefinable meat it is holding. The

settles for remaining within the stretcher, he would later juxtapose several

picture is collage-like, made up of two seemingly very different elements

canvases, thereby creating a physical, tangible encounter between various

in collision.

approaches: figurative, totally non-figurative and abstract parts which, as

The lack of any narrative connections between the two sections

in Freedom is Relative, depict something abstract and yet tangible, that is,

prompts our brains to work overtime in an interpretative attempt to

elegantly processed, formless meat. This is evident in the much later work

understand what is going on. Is it about a violent sexual relationship, about an

Zero Eye (2006). [ILL: Zero Eye (2006)]

abortion, about an environment on the lowest rung of society colliding with

One of the inspirations for the composite, assembled pictures came

a surrealistically-inspired intermezzo? The picture was the result of Kvium’s

after 2000 when, together with his artist colleague Christian Lemmerz, Kvium

attempt to capture the world around him quite simply by cutting pictures out

created the eight-hour film The Wake, based on James Joyce’s masterpiece

of magazines, which he then translated into painting and reassembled, before

Finnegans Wake. The film is a grotesque performative presentation of human

simply adding the weird clash between meat and metal in the bottom section.

folly and of the endless, laborious work of editing, sitting with composite

This approach created a sort of three-dimensional identity in a medium like

images, where madness sets in in the seemingly pointless combinations.

painting, which we have otherwise become accustomed to taking at face

[NEW ILL: Stills from The Wake]

16 | Gitte Ørskou

17 | Blindless Revealed. An Introduction to Michael Kvium

Fig. 101 Zero Eye, 2006 Oil on canvas 3 parts, 43 5/16 x 129 15/16 in | 110 x 330 cm Private Collection Photo: Anders Sune Berg [Mkv-2006-35]

meticulous figuration. The picture is divided into two areas. In the upper

value in a somewhat more one-dimensional interpretation, so that we truly

area a pair of clenched woman’s legs with a dirty male hand between them

believe that the universe within the picture plane is real.

dominates the picture plane. The red area at the bottom is painted with no

Juxtaposing essentially different elements was later to become one

modelling at all. In the foreground is a metal instrument, whose serrated

of Kvium’s distinctive artistic strategies. Whereas in Freedom is Relative he

grip is a stark contrast to the soft piece of indefinable meat it is holding. The

settles for remaining within the stretcher, he would later juxtapose several

picture is collage-like, made up of two seemingly very different elements

canvases, thereby creating a physical, tangible encounter between various

in collision.

approaches: figurative, totally non-figurative and abstract parts which, as

The lack of any narrative connections between the two sections

in Freedom is Relative, depict something abstract and yet tangible, that is,

prompts our brains to work overtime in an interpretative attempt to

elegantly processed, formless meat. This is evident in the much later work

understand what is going on. Is it about a violent sexual relationship, about an

Zero Eye (2006). [ILL: Zero Eye (2006)]

abortion, about an environment on the lowest rung of society colliding with

One of the inspirations for the composite, assembled pictures came

a surrealistically-inspired intermezzo? The picture was the result of Kvium’s

after 2000 when, together with his artist colleague Christian Lemmerz, Kvium

attempt to capture the world around him quite simply by cutting pictures out

created the eight-hour film The Wake, based on James Joyce’s masterpiece

of magazines, which he then translated into painting and reassembled, before

Finnegans Wake. The film is a grotesque performative presentation of human

simply adding the weird clash between meat and metal in the bottom section.

folly and of the endless, laborious work of editing, sitting with composite

This approach created a sort of three-dimensional identity in a medium like

images, where madness sets in in the seemingly pointless combinations.

painting, which we have otherwise become accustomed to taking at face

[NEW ILL: Stills from The Wake]

16 | Gitte Ørskou

17 | Blindless Revealed. An Introduction to Michael Kvium

Fig. 15 U.T. / Untitled, 1987 Oil on canvas 59 3/16 x 51 5/16 in | 150.3 x 130.3 cm Horsens Art Museum Photo: Svend Pedersen [MKv-1987-12]

30 | Gitte Ørskou

Fig. 27-28 Oral Moral I + II, 1989 Oil on canvas 82 11/16 x 55 1/8 in | 210 x 140 cm each Deposita, Kunsten Museum of Modern Art Photo: Niels Fabæk Kristensen [MKv-1989-15]

31 | Blindless Revealed. An Introduction to Michael Kvium

Fig. 15 U.T. / Untitled, 1987 Oil on canvas 59 3/16 x 51 5/16 in | 150.3 x 130.3 cm Horsens Art Museum Photo: Svend Pedersen [MKv-1987-12]

30 | Gitte Ørskou

Fig. 27-28 Oral Moral I + II, 1989 Oil on canvas 82 11/16 x 55 1/8 in | 210 x 140 cm each Deposita, Kunsten Museum of Modern Art Photo: Niels Fabæk Kristensen [MKv-1989-15]

31 | Blindless Revealed. An Introduction to Michael Kvium

Fig. 179 Hell, 2018 Oil on canvas 51 3/16 x 63 in | 130 x 160 cm Private Collection Photo: Anders Sune Berg [MKv-2018-30]

Fig. 171 Beach of Plenty, 2017 Oil on canvas 3 panels, 118 1/8 x 98 7/16 in | 300 x 250 cm each Private Collection Photo: Anders Sune Berg [Mkv-2017-11]

derly woman, half-clothed and caked in garish make up, wears a pink ball cap, emblazoned with an American flag. Her feet, in fact half of her body, remain not only engulfed in the mud but in oil, in the false consciousness and deadly consequences of The Duke’s reign: “how we look when the glamour is stripped away.” However, it is the next work that the spectator encounters which, for Kvium, stands as the central indictment of an exhibition seeking to address the consequences of political extremism, the crisis of global migration, and the delirious greed of unbridled capitalism. The Beach of Plenty (2017), a massive three-panel work, depicts the scene from a Mediterranean shoreline: the sagging bodies of three white Europeans look on as a boat of desperate migrants approach the edge of the surf. The figures safe on the sand have their back to us: we share their gaze. A man stands with his hands behind his back, a woman is motionless with arms lax by her sides. No one breeches the water to come the aid of the suffering and displaced. It is Géricault’s Raft, bereft of compassion.

Yet, the implication is clear: “you suddenly realize that it’s about your own tragedy.”78 In the political engagement of the informe, still found in Kvium’s most classically representational work, a reversal occurs.

Just as the figures on the beach would attempt to make of migrants a lumpenproletariat, the abject of social body defined as “scum, offal, refuse of all classes,”79 it is the spectators, blithe Europeans, in their idle degradation, in their blindness to their own cruelty and destruction, who in the grotesque denouement of the exhibition meet their ultimate fate: the consequences of Western gluttony, distraction, indifference in Alien Aftermath’s horrific maze of twisted flesh. Not only are “We the dangerous others” for Kvium, we are also the abject, the informe, the lower than low, the scum, the offal, the refuse of all classes, the intrusion and the base, trundling blindly into oblivion.

222 | Brooke Lynn McGowan

223 | The Fool, the Fetus, and the Postmodern Turn

Fig. 179 Hell, 2018 Oil on canvas 51 3/16 x 63 in | 130 x 160 cm Private Collection Photo: Anders Sune Berg [MKv-2018-30]

Fig. 171 Beach of Plenty, 2017 Oil on canvas 3 panels, 118 1/8 x 98 7/16 in | 300 x 250 cm each Private Collection Photo: Anders Sune Berg [Mkv-2017-11]

derly woman, half-clothed and caked in garish make up, wears a pink ball cap, emblazoned with an American flag. Her feet, in fact half of her body, remain not only engulfed in the mud but in oil, in the false consciousness and deadly consequences of The Duke’s reign: “how we look when the glamour is stripped away.” However, it is the next work that the spectator encounters which, for Kvium, stands as the central indictment of an exhibition seeking to address the consequences of political extremism, the crisis of global migration, and the delirious greed of unbridled capitalism. The Beach of Plenty (2017), a massive three-panel work, depicts the scene from a Mediterranean shoreline: the sagging bodies of three white Europeans look on as a boat of desperate migrants approach the edge of the surf. The figures safe on the sand have their back to us: we share their gaze. A man stands with his hands behind his back, a woman is motionless with arms lax by her sides. No one breeches the water to come the aid of the suffering and displaced. It is Géricault’s Raft, bereft of compassion.

Yet, the implication is clear: “you suddenly realize that it’s about your own tragedy.”78 In the political engagement of the informe, still found in Kvium’s most classically representational work, a reversal occurs.

Just as the figures on the beach would attempt to make of migrants a lumpenproletariat, the abject of social body defined as “scum, offal, refuse of all classes,”79 it is the spectators, blithe Europeans, in their idle degradation, in their blindness to their own cruelty and destruction, who in the grotesque denouement of the exhibition meet their ultimate fate: the consequences of Western gluttony, distraction, indifference in Alien Aftermath’s horrific maze of twisted flesh. Not only are “We the dangerous others” for Kvium, we are also the abject, the informe, the lower than low, the scum, the offal, the refuse of all classes, the intrusion and the base, trundling blindly into oblivion.

222 | Brooke Lynn McGowan

223 | The Fool, the Fetus, and the Postmodern Turn

Fig. 144 U.T. / Untitled, 2014 Oil on canvas 2 panels, 43 5/16 x 39 3/8 in | 110 x 100 cm each Private Collection Photo: Anders Sune Berg [MKV-2014-84]

Fig. 141 Et Øjebliks Forlængelse / Prolonging a Moment, 2014 Oil on canvas 2 panels, 39 3/16 x 23 5/8 in | 100 x 60 cm; 59 1/16 x 47 1/4 in | 150 x 140 Private Collection Photo: Anders Sune Berg [MKv-2014-37]

230 | Works

231 | Works

Fig. 144 U.T. / Untitled, 2014 Oil on canvas 2 panels, 43 5/16 x 39 3/8 in | 110 x 100 cm each Private Collection Photo: Anders Sune Berg [MKV-2014-84]

Fig. 141 Et Øjebliks Forlængelse / Prolonging a Moment, 2014 Oil on canvas 2 panels, 39 3/16 x 23 5/8 in | 100 x 60 cm; 59 1/16 x 47 1/4 in | 150 x 140 Private Collection Photo: Anders Sune Berg [MKv-2014-37]

230 | Works

231 | Works