14. september – 1. december 2013

ULRIK MØLLER – THE MOON, KIDS, BIRDS AND AEROPLANES

Ulrik Møller’s subjects are all located within an area of 3 km² surrounding his childhood home in the Danish town of Vester Aaby, southern Funen. Although he does venture further afield, for example, to the harbour in Faaborg. There he discovered a subject which made the journalist Adrian Hughes, from the national broadcaster DR, suggest that Møller is on the whole an ‘old fashioned’ artist:

When he paints a ferry, you can see clearly that it is a ferry. You can nearly see how the ferry has been at the shipyard and had its rust removed. I am not aware of any other Danish painters who paint like he does. There is a quietness in Ulrik Møller’s paintings – they are sinister.

But Ulrik Møller is far from a parochial painter. He lives in Berlin and recalls the details of the Funen landscape through the thousands of photographs he has taken. His affiliation to these two very different places, Funen and Berlin, constitutes his preferred subjects whether the output is imposing, large canvases, a series of small-scale works or moving images.

Whether he delineates urban buildings or the southern Funen landscapes with its small towns or the sea, the works are engaging on account of, or perhaps in spite of, the absence of people and life. The work possesses a quiet atmosphere of calm in the misty landscapes. Sea, sky, a far-off aeroplane, down-at-heel streets or the glimpse of a television mast are all painterly elements, which on their own create life and dynamism in these quiet works.

Site-specific work testifies to the artist’s perception of both the social aspects of particular places and their aesthetic qualities. However there is also the universal and archetypal landscape, which lies beyond time and place. Both are of the past and summon what is yet to come.

Ulrik Møller follows in the footsteps of late 19th-century symbolism and infuses a dream-like dimension to the depiction of the landscape. Faaborg Museum’s distinguished collection of work by the Funen Painters plays together with Ulrik Møller’s work. Some of his work is concerned with the same landscapes and he is committed to the nearby surroundings and his native home, whether they are iconic landmarks or unassuming places. Or, as we all see, irrespective of where we are on the planet, the moon, a child, birds and aeroplanes.

During the summer of 2013 the exhibition was at Randers Kunstmuseum and received glowing reviews. Faaborg Museum expands the exhibition with a number of new pieces of work, which the artist has been making right up until the opening of the show.

A richly illustrated catalogue is published in conjunction with the exhibition, written by Lise Jeppesen, Susanne Thestrup Truelsen (Faaborg Museum’s former director), Majbritt Løland and Lone Scherfig and costing 130 Kr.