Heavenly Considerations

Paintings by Henrik Martensen

There are high ceilings in the visual world of artist Henrik Martensen and the central pillared hall of the art center this summer. The small person in the large space is a recurring theme in the artist's works. As a painter, he works in line with a recent trend, where individual visual artists and art photographers at home and abroad are seeking a hyper-realistic expression. Fascination with real-life natural phenomena is, however, processed - some emphasized, others omitted - so that the picture itself ultimately stands as a pure statement.
As artists since the end of the 18th century have worked to both study and elevate natural phenomena to central motifs in painting and not just as a backdrop for genre painting, it is also this tradition that forms the backdrop for Henrik Martensen's work. As he himself says: "The power of nature is magical, spiritual and divine and it is also what spurs and inspires me to make my pictures."
It is thus, to the same extent as the seen, the impact of nature that the artist seeks to retain in his motifs, each of which appears as a concentrate of energy and divine beauty.
Henrik Martensen finds inspiration in the Danish, primarily coastal landscapes and other places with wide horizons and high skies. It is the great open, where man can experience himself in right proportion to nature's great vacuum, life and death. Dramatic, fascinating and hopeful at the same time.
Heavenly Considerations comprises just over 50 paintings and is the first major exhibition where the painterly universe of the self-taught Henrik Martensen (b. 1956) is presented concentrated in a solo exhibition. Here he also shows the short film work The World is Turning (05:19), which presents a completely different side of him as a visual and sound artist. A catalogue is published in connection.