Troels Carlsen: Reverie

Five large elaborate iconic tableaus arranged in the gallery in a chamber-like constellation set the stage for Troels Carlsen’s solo exhibition Reverie.

The five works function as portals to Carlsen’s vivid neo-surrealist universe where humans, animals and vegetation grow and flow in and out of each other in an elaborate organic cycle.

In the exhibition, Carlsen balances the monumental with the intimate, originality with archetype, and biology with mystery. His visual atlas defies standard classification, it is beyond dream and too intentional to be deemed surrealist. The work is a product of Carlsen’s wildfire imagination, trained and pushed to the limit and beyond, akin to a professional athlete training for the Olympics, he has exercised his imagination to a unique plane.

His work resonates with ancient art from Greece, Rome and Egypt, old masters and contemporary compositions. It is radical and intuitive, you connect and respond with emotion before your learned brain turns on. Similar to the response many us experience momentarily in nature. The brief awe of existence from the banal beauty of the sunset, the mountain covered in clouds, the mossy forest floor, the flight formation of birds, and the deer that stares back at us. Carlsen has developed a rarefied visual vocabulary that engages at a positive primitive level.

In Reverie he lets it sing, you feel connected – the universe, both physical and metaphysical, feels wild and free, full of wonder and unexplored potential. As if in the realm of original artistic creation, there is some hope for both humanity and the planet.

Reverie is Troels Carlsen’s eighth exhibition with the V1 Gallery / Eighteen family.

Kilde: Eighteen