In this new body of work, Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen presents a mixture of new formal explorations and works more typical of his architectural painting. Especially the painting: The Green Revolution is remarkable for its two canvases joined together.
The left canvas depicts 15 photo-realistic blue barrels, referencing pop artist Andy Warhols serial painting of soup cans and money notes, juxtaposed with a black canvas on the right. But where Warhol jubilates mass consumption as the new existential mode of industrial society Havsteen-Mikkelsen explores the hidden condition for this pattern of consumption: fossil fuels and how it was used to control vast landscapes of agricultural production artificially.
Other works in the show underpin how fossil fuels have altered our perception of reality. This is obvious in the panoramic painting 'Gaslighting' of a petrol station illuminated from the inside, creating a blurry nightscape. Gaslighting refers to when someone psychologically is manipulating reality – thereby making people doubt their sense of reality. Here, the title refers to how our use and access to fossil fuels change how we act and perceive ourselves as individual car owners, because of the freedom it generates by giving us access to explosive energy. We have been 'gaslighted' into our current idea of how to move around the world.
Yet, Havsteen-Mikkelsen also seems to offer an alternative to a world dominated by fossil capitalism (the exhibition title: 'Fake Empire'). In the large painting: 'All Wild Forces Forward' we first see a blurry forest-like greenery, but after a closer look, we begin to see the remnants of a modernist building behind the canopy. In other words, the modernist house is being overtaken by wild nature again.
Source:
KANT
KANT