Galleri Brandstrup is delighted to present Lars Elling’s upcoming solo exhibition, Nei, dette husker vi, opening on Thursday, March 20, at 6 PM. This exhibition marks the first part of a series of paintings from Elling’s forthcoming novel of the same name.
Elling is a storyteller at heart. His layered imagery evokes fragments of childhood memories, where moments of familiarity are often unsettled by an undercurrent of unease. Family remains a recurring theme in his work, seemingly ordinary scenes disrupted by unexpected or unsettling elements.
Formally, Elling’s paintings embrace the erased and the fractured. His compositions, marked by visual ruptures and ghostly traces, function not just as images but as poetic expressions, memories flickering between the almost-seen and the almost-felt. His work has often been compared to Francis Bacon, particularly in the way it captures the logic of emotions, a narrative structure that unfolds with a beginning, middle, and end, though not necessarily in that order.
Elling navigates a paradox of intentional and unintentional, crafting his paintings through a process of concentrated effort and moments of surrender. His approach to storytelling is akin to that of Chantal Akerman, particularly in her film Toute Une Nuit. Just as Akerman’s minimalist vignettes of silent embraces resist linear interpretation, Elling’s paintings exist within a language that is not bound by words but rather by symbols, emotions, and aesthetic resonance.
With Nei, dette husker vi, Elling invites viewers into a world where memory is elusive, where images hover between recognition and abstraction, and where meaning is constructed in the quiet spaces between brushstrokes.
