Anders Moseholm
"Things Fall Apart"
West Gallery
January 6 - February 24, 2024
Opening Reception:
Saturday, January 6, 6pm-9pm
Houston-based artist Randall Mosman and Copenhagen's Anders Moseholm, united by a profound passion for figurative painting and a shared perspective on life and art, present "Things Fall Apart." While they've previously showcased their artistic synergy at Devin Borden Gallery in 2019, the 2024 exhibition at Redbud Arts Center marks their most expansive collaboration yet.
The exhibition's title eloquently mirrors the artists' approach to figurative painting. It captures a mental reality that is simultaneously beautiful and coherent, yet distorted and unsettling—a portrayal of doubt where everything seems to be in constant flux, yet harmoniously interconnected.
In their own words:
"In our artwork, layers of material create a subjective, physical, tactile, timeless experience. It's not just another beautiful image of reality for conceptual analysis; we are immersed in a world flooded with such images on the internet."
Mosman and Moseholm draw inspiration from a primal connection to expressing the incomprehensible—akin to how individuals in the Stone Age depicted life on cave walls. For them, when things fall apart, it opens the door to new possibilities—a sentiment echoed in Leonard Cohen’s song "Anthem":
"There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in."
ARTIST STATEMENT
When I look at reality, I have a tendency to overlook the window I’m looking through. However, I find it interesting to be aware of this window. When I look my view is affected by emotions, irrational feelings, history, experience, memories, western culture, dreams etc. My paintings seem to contain layers of time in the way they function as reflections. They reflect that our past and imagination about the future affect us when we look at reality of contemporary time. My paintings function like a mental membrane trying to unify now/then and here/there.
My motifs of urban landscape and old baroque interiors have the intertwined, complex pattern in common. The patterns seduce my eyes to look closer and explore the labyrinthine architecture. The process makes me feel very present in the here and now although I look at motifs from the past.
Some thoughts of the German philosopher, Walter Benjamin, influenced me for this exhibition. Especially his thoughts about the past. He observes that when you look at ruins and things that are about to collapse or perish, it makes us aware of qualities we don’t want to lose. Makes us aware that we still want to have them in contemporary time now. This little moment, when we suddenly realize this, is very important for us in order to be able to see new possibilities for the future. ’Es hat Klick gesagt’. (which roughly translates to ‘it clicks’)
The dissolved, blurred historic motifs are not about a sentimental, nostalgic energy. On the contrary, it is an energy that wants to wake you up and open the window to the future.
A colleague of mine told me that my artwork was a kind of like a self-portrait of my old mind in contemporary time. Actually, I think if you could look into any mind of a human being, you would not see the inside of an iPhone, but instead a mind full of memories, emotions and history that is not updated, but nevertheless, still inspired to find new possibilities for the future.
