Exhibition
Martin Erik Andersen - matter and mind – slipping through our fingers - Sprovieri
Taking bearings is a challenge when encountering Martin Erik Andersen’s installations, sculptural explorations and works on paper for the first time. Within what Andersen refers to as his ‘general register of materials’ there are elements of concrete, steel reinforcing bars, scraps of newspaper cartoons, wonky knitting and embroidery, electrical wiring and light fittings, moulded silicone, a record player with a picture disc spinning... Is it finished? Did we arrive too early? Too late?
As we hunt for clues and associative links between the materials an intuitive grasp of Andersen’s schema may rise. Then we find that there is a jumping-off point – perhaps the drawings of Freud or a quote from Nick Nolte. In matter and mind – slipping through our fingers we encounter these in embroidered elements within the works, and more tangentially in the ganglia, cells and varicose fibres that the sculptural elements broker. And so it is when any individual piece by Andersen is seen in the context of his work as a whole; these intuitive forays take shape and purpose, revealing themselves as a metapsychological mapping of liminal spaces between conscious and unconscious awareness.
matter and mind - slipping through our finger at Sprovieri is the first opportunity in the UK to encounter a full, dedicated environment of work by the award-winning Andersen. Prolific and widely exhibited in Denmark, Andersen is represented in the collections of the The National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen, the Holstebro Kunstmuseum, and the Arken, Museum of Modern Art, Ishøj, Denmark.
