Opening 6 November 2008, 17-20

The exhibition Safe Behind the Curtain consists of a series of Carina Randløv’s drawings and collages as well as an installation and an animated film. Her work examine the daily life behind the facades of the suburban life critically but loving. Here everybody peep on each other at the same time as they hide behind the Venetian blinds not to show too much of themselves.

Carina Randløv’s drawings are simple in their expression with fine lines of marker, cut-outs and the limited use of colours. At the same time the motifs seem very powerful because they with their simplicity are able to evoke strong feelings in the spectator. The feeling of peeping on others while hiding is present in Randløv’s work and emphasized by the title: "Safe Behind the Curtain". When meeting the pieces the viewer gets the same feeling of peeping when he/she is drawn in behind the privet hedge and in/voluntarily becomes part of the suburban life.Some motifs by Randløv are a section of homely interior while others represent stills of superficial daily business. None of the people who are a part of Randløv’s every day scenarios show their faces. At most we see a mouth but never the eyes. The persons are anonymous and become a picture of the common suburban inhabitant. 

Well knowing that the life in the suburbs has more to it than prying into the neighbour’s life Carina Randløv humorous and sarcastically comments on the well-preserved facades where the joints in the brickwork are fired on with mortar so it doesn’t crackle and leaves its skeleton visible. At the same time as Randløv criticises the prying and peeping suburban life she takes on the role as peeping Tom herself to be able to reproduce and give her expression to the lives lived outside the big cities. Randløv calls it “a hate-loving peep into the suburbs with the blinds down. Into the daily life business in the living room.”

Carina Randløv (b 1975, Copenhagen) studies at the Animation directing side at The National Film School of Denmark. She exhibited at Gallery Moti Hasson in New York, Galleri Skuch, Ljubljana, Würtemmbergischer Kunstverein, ASPN galerie, Leipzig, and Galerie K&S, Berlin. She also participated in several group exhibition and art festivals such as Contemporary Arts Centre in Vilnius, Lithuania, 2006, Womens Art Festival in Syria, 2007 and International Roaming Biennial of Tehran in Istanbul, 2008. “Safe Behind the Curtain” is Carina Randløv’s second solo exhibtion at Helene Nyborg Contemporary.