Meditations on the Uncanny

June 5th - July 10^th 2010

“It was pitch black and I had no sense of where I was. (…) For too long I was nothing but an abstract, placeless thought with an uncanny certainty that I was unable to think my way to clarity.”

 Henrik Oxvig

It is a great pleasure to present Meditations on the Uncanny by Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen. The exhibition, comprising 9 paintings and two works on paper, explores the uncanny and its different dimensions of meaning in architectural space.

In a broad sense, the Freudian concept of the uncanny (das Unheimliche) covers the alienating experience of the unhomely, the urge for repetition, that which is unknown, and the return of the suppressed. The exhibited works relate to the uncanny in different ways, as seen in the painting Villa in the Exhibition where a former motif returns in an altered form, or in Sphere I where a mysterious globe hovers in a black universe between figuration and abstraction. The work concretizes the exhibition’s proposition in its alteration between something, at the same time, known and unknown. The form is repeated in different variations in Egg, Lamp, Transmitters and Garage. The architectural landscapes seem quirky and desolate, as places we know but cannot inhabit. 

Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen’s unique technique, in which many layers are added to the canvas, makes the clear lines of the painting break and underlying motifs appear. A complex life behind the seemingly abandoned buildings and interiors is revealed. 

Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2009. He has exhibited at Galerie im Regierungsviertel, Berlin; Brandenburgischer Kunstverein, Potsdam; Galerie MøllerWitt, Aarhus, and is represented in the collection of the Danish Arts Council and the Culture Fund of Copenhagen Municipality.  Meditations of the Uncanny is the third solo exhibition by Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen at Helene Nyborg Contemporary.