I am always interested in talking to galleries and exhibition spaces around the world. Send me an e-mail if you want to get in contact with me.
"Interaktion" 2012 Art Equity, Sydney
Danish artist Morten Lassen and I first met in the small French village of Buis-les-Baronnies in the shadow of the mythical Mont-Ventoux. The random encounter led to a few glasses of local red wine and a viewing of photographs of his paintings. Immediately captivated by his work, I asked the artist if he had ever considered coming to Australia. His answer in deadpan Nordic English was an empathic "No...Never."
Ten years on, Morten Lassen has exhibited every year in Australia and lived off and on in both Sydney and Melbourne. His work has been collected by public and private collections throughout Australia and he has firmly established himself as one of the premier abstract artists in the country. This should not be a surprise as his work is in constant demand around the world.
In the last two years Lassen has shown with great success in Sydney, Melbourne, New York, London, Copenhagen and Stockholm. Indeed his influence in Australia extends beyond collectors. A generation of young local artists are looking to him, not as the oracle, but as an artist who has been able to capture the ethereal nature of the contemporary world.
This is an important challenge for our artists, our politicians and economists. We are constantly reminded that we are a world community and technology has made this practical and real. Indeed, Lassen is the personification of a world citizen; his work transcends borders, race and language. It is beautiful and it is powerful; it is work of our time.
In recent months, Sydney has been treated to the extraordinary career of modernist painter Pablo Picasso. In my various viewings of this great artist's work, it is his constant searching for the essence of modernism that is so integral. For Picasso wanted painting to survive photography and the moving picture and indeed society itself.
Lassen continues this theme. He is a painter who wants to show that the ancient medium of oil paint can influence our society now. For Lassen, painting must remain relevant and his works show us that technology is still a function of humanity.
In these new works, the juxtaposition of organic Rothkoesque shapes is anchored by intense gridlines like a matrix tethering and connecting humanity. Lassen embraces technology to link his work to disparate cultures, yet unlike Wikipedia or Google, he doesn't give us all the answers. Ultimately you have to work it out yourself- the (often over looked) ultimate human condition of creative thought is required.
It is work by artists like Morten Lassen that ensures painting will never die.
Ralph Hobbs, February 2012
"Båndbredde" 2011
Båndbredde is a dynamic exhibition by Danish artist, Morten Lassen. Lassen is an artist who is dissolving boarders both culturally and geographically. He splits his time between Australia and Denmark enjoying representation in London and New York, as well as major northern European cities. Apart from the obvious acknowledgement that his work is sought after worldwide, of more interest to me is the fact this work has relevance across the globe. This is not an exhibition that is anchored in one visual tradition, rather it borrows from many and then injects an electric quality that entices closer investigation.
The paintings in this exhibition not only explore the nature of abstraction in a visual sense but give this aging aesthetic a new voice. Lassen delves into the ethereal world of the internet transfer and data communication, whilst maintaining his connection with oil paint and canvas. Worldwide instant connection to anyone everywhere at anytime has irreversibly changed us as a global community. So intense is our involvement with media transfer that many of our own thoughts are given little more than abstract acknowledgements as we strive to keep in contact with the world. Indeed although Lassen is working in the abstract, one can argue that he is actually working in a representative manner. He is directly representing the abstract world that we live in today - not abstracting the real as has traditionally been the methodology of the 'abstract' artist.
This idea has precedence, the great Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) in the early part of the 20th century changed forever abstraction as he explored colour, line and movement. One of his great achievements is to have created works of pictorial harmony that represented what is like to see music. Lassen takes the next step and gives us a vision of just what the world of ethereal world of data transfer feels and looks like. And I can report that it is beautiful. All that information, sound, and visual stimulus passing around the world in some extraordinary vortex, and the artist represents in the age old medium of oil paint.
When looking at art, it is important to view it within a historical context for all art has a genesis. One key influence that Lassen cannot avoid is his connection to CoBrA. It is interesting to note that typically major art movements are created out of an urge for change, to look at things differently and introduce new ideas on culture. This certainly the case with the CoBrA group (1949-51), an eclectic and passionate collective of northern European artists and writers. The group worked in the context of the Twentieth Century with all its unprecedented change in communication and travel as well as its dramatic social upheaval. Ultimately CoBrA rebelled against centuries of artistic tradition, after all in their minds what had the great cultures of Europe given its people - two world wars? As Contant Niewenheuys wrote in 1949, as part of an associated manifesto in published in CoBrA no.4 : "For all we know of the realm of our desires is that it continuously reverts to one immeasurable desire for freedom." 1.
In this revolutionary charged environment the northern European collective of CoBrA unleashed it anarchic primitive aesthetic, and it has stuck. From Europe to the USA, from DeKooning to our own John Olsen. And now Lassen leads the latest generation to morph the ideas from over 50 years ago. For us living today, visualising and understanding this intense new world that we live in, creating harmony in the chaos of the world - we go some way to giving us the freedom Constant sought in 1949. After all, how can one harness what one does not understand? Båndbredde is an important exhibition as it shows us what we don't understand, and ultimately that will as give us freedom.
Ralph Hobbs
March 2010
1. Essay originally appeared in CoBrA no. 4 Amsterdam, 1949, p. 304. This reference taken from Harrison, Wood Art in Theory 1900-1990. p.650 Brackwell Press.
My work is abstract and expressive, which means that I don’t use sketches or other kinds of preparatory work before starting on a painting. My paintings develop as I am painting, and I work very spontaneously and intuitively.
The paintings consist of many layers. While painting the first layers, I try to conquer the canvas and make it mine. In the following layers, I work with colour composition, structure, contrast and balance. I work only with oil paint and that means, that the paintings need long periods of drying between the layers, sometimes 2-3 weeks.
Because of this, I have to work on many paintings at the same time if I want to have dry paintings to work on every day. I often work on 20-30 consecutively. It may sound chaotic to keep track on that many paintings, but I don’t see that as a problem because I always paint in the present. When I take a dry work out to work on, I don’t think about what I did to it last time or which thoughts I had. I work on it with fresh eyes, so to speak, and do what I feel important in the present moment.
Often the work changes dramatically during the process of layering. It takes 4-6 months to finalise a group of paintings and during that time the work undergoes big colour changes. It is these changes that builds the painting, and it is only because of the journey the works ends where they ends. I can’t skip the journey.
Painting on many paintings at the same time, the work often influences each other. Colours and symbols can be used from one work to the next and in some way you can “steal” and be inspired from oneself.
When the work reaches the end, I often work with some kind of symbols or figures. They are like fixing points and helps to “close” the painting. It is a very crucial time in the painting process because when the “figures” are there, there is no turning back. Either the painting works or I have to do some radical to the work to continue the journey.
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If I had to describe when a painting is finished, it is easiest to describe it as a puzzle, where the last brick goes in. The painting kind of “locks” itself and becomes harmonic. As an artist, I get a feeling of release and perhaps happiness, and the desire to keep working on the painting disappears. You can say that a single brush stroke more, would be too much
Morten Lassen 2008
The Sentient Paintbrush
One can no longer call expressionistic expression or abstract painting an 'ism' at this point in time. The era of the major isms is definitely past. Both expressionism and abstractionism are living under completely different circumstances determined by the development of art itself.
If anything, one could say that abstract painting signifies a way of understanding the painting, more than a method. And expressive painting, per definition, is the artist's own deeply personal struggle with the matter.
That brings us to painter Morten Lassen and his way of painting. He moves in both directions, or, more precisely, dimensions. Abstract, in that he creates a universe that defines itself in every single painting. Expressive, that is to say that he paints extremely subjectively, almost spiritually; sensually and exploringly.
He has obviously been painting for many years, and seriously so since the mid-1990s. In this branch, that is almost a generation, because the inconstancy of art is more rash than ever. The latest news quickly becomes old news.
Morten Lassen has sensibly held on to a sort of point of reference for his paintings. In a way he is nearly classical. For him, a painting is a sensitive voyage of discovery into the colors and forms. His talent is instinctive, not calculated.
His paintings are plainly filled with temperament and contrasts. The elements and colors of the paintings play up to each other as in a piece of music in which the musician allows him/herself to improvise on some given themes. It is this particular sense of improvisation that makes the difference between an ordinary talent and an exceptional talent.
If one looks more closely, there are many feelings in his paintings which are revealed in the nuances. In art, as in so many other relationships, God is in the details. Morten Lassen's paintings ought be perceived and experienced slowly, almost pleasurably. To a convincing degree he is able to allow his colors to flow and flash and between them they form arabesques as well as less familiar
But he knows his visual grammar. All of the
colours in the world are kept in reign by the forms that are created around them. Colors die in chaos.
Once again a duality enters, which often balances between chaos and equilibrium. Colours function as breakaways and forms as adherents. In a sense, c olours are the equivalent to the spiritual and forms are the material that it can all be built upon, the foundation that gives rise to stability and coherence.
Morten Lassen is both certain and uncertain in his paintings. Certain in the way he works his craft, and uncertain in the delightful way he dares to let the improvisations unfold.
Once could call it the music of chance .
Ole Lindboe
Editor of Magasinet Kunst (The Art Magazine). Author of a number of art books. Guest professor at the Venice International Summer Academy.
Translated from Danish by Pamela Starbird
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