Marcus Bjernerup »Approaching the New Dark Age by Balloon«

We are very happy to show a series of paintings and drawings by Marcus Bjernerup, presented under the comprehensive title of Approaching the New Dark Age by Balloon, as the last exhibition this spring.

On the content level his works are characterised by contradictions and ambiguities, where the focus seems to be put on a disintegrating culture, where man is caught in a complex and sometimes frustratingly absurd reality.

The turbulent and often chaotic traits of his works are further emphasised by his technique, whereby the original images are cut up, and then reassembled in a deferred way.

It is a process that has fragmented information and forced it into a compromise between abstraction and representation. New forms take shape - and the viewer finds himself in the middle of a visual jigsaw.

In Bjernerup's imagery we find references to popular culture, medieval portrayals of Hell, cartoons, surrealism and the banality of our everyday existence. Control and rigour has to co-exist with the intuitive, the hazardous, and the disorderly.

The interplay between opposites is what fuels the narrative in Bjerneru's art - one image at the time. Marcus Bjernerup was born 1969, in Örebro, Sweden. He presently lives and works in Stockholm.