Henrik Olesen,
Hand-Painted Surfaces 3, 2018
Cardboard, paint, table, 8 elements, 90 x 140 x 70 cm

Henrik Olesen, born in Denmark in 1967, lives and works in Berlin (Germany). He is represented by the Buchholz (Berlin / Cologne / New York) and Franco Noero (Turin) galleries.

In his work, Henrik Olesen explores questions of identity, language and body to describe power relations and social norms. His most recent works take repetition, consumption and signs as their starting point.

Henrik Olesen creates a vocabulary of images in his work and a new anthology to refer to both his family universe and to all humanity, as if he had recreated a world to his standards to replace the pre-existing one. In his artistic universe where the “minimal” sculptures, produced from wooden sticks, are named father or mother, he recreates families of objects and genealogies that question the masculine, feminine and queer. A resolute form of poetry emerges from his vitrines constructed from purely industrial materials, taking the size of his arms or torso as their model.

Hand-Painted Surfaces 3 is part of an ensemble of 6 similar pieces presented for the first time in Paris, at the Galerie Chantal Crousel, between 28 April and 27 May 2018, for Henrik Olesen’s first solo exhibition in France, titled 6 or 7 new works. A collective use of the registers of painting, sculpture and installation, it consists of packaging from food products or medicines painted with large brushstrokes and glued to a second-hand table. The table with the painted objects becomes a surface and is transformed into a landscape of our eating and lifestyle habits, punctuated here and there by painkillers.