PER DYBVIG
2014-11-24Per Dybvig is a traveller of the imagination, exploring white areas on the map and on the white drawing paper where no one has laid their hand before: unconventional arrangement of pictorial space, distortion of perspective and scale, strange details that defy the limits of realism, and almost virtuoso drawing techniques. Dybvig seduces us with precise craftsmanship to enter a world of imagery both beautiful and sinister, like scenes in an absurd play, or like fables where Aesop has lost his train of thought and forgotten the point of the story long ago.
The inspiration for the animations and the drawings that show variations on the hare theme comes from a woodblock print dating back to 1535: The Hunter Caught by the Hares, by Georg Pencz, where the hunter has been hanged from a tree and the hares are preparing for a feast. Dybvig distorts the stylised image of the Renaissance into vivid, rough drawings in his films and into delicate, sophisticated pen drawings. The bizarre, the twisted, and the carnivalesque are established as natural phenomena beyond this world, as André Breton points out in the catalogue for a 1921 Max Ernst exhibition: “Who knows if we are not in this manner being prepared for escaping the principle of identity?”
Opposite – Untitled, 2014
Exhibition runs through to December 23rd, 2015
Christine König Galerie
Schleifmuehlgasse 1A
1040 Vienna
Austria
www.christinekoeniggalerie.com
