SUPERDANISH

On Wednesday October 6th, OCAD hosted an informal panel discussion with four contemporary Danish artists who were participating in the event SUPERDANISH hosted by Harbourfront Centre. The artists presented their work through showing slides and and video. I have never had the opportunity to go to any panel discussions or to see artist guest speakers who have come to OCAD before, usually due to working when these events have been held. So I had no idea what to really expect. I even felt that I would end up slipping out to go upstairs to work on the painting I've been working on for class. To my surprise I really enjoyed this event and I'm very glad I stayed. The four artists worked in varied disciplines. The first artist, Mette Winckelmann a painter who displays painting with fabic sewn together as paintings in installations. She would leave holes with in the fabric pieces that allow you to see through to a painting hanging on the wall. The work was abstract with the fabric works sewn together as an extension of the painted work. The next artist, Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen works with video and computer animation. In most of the work she uses her family as her subject matter but the work she was showing during SUPERDANISH was on observing bikers during a biker festival. The second of the two was a woman biker get together and what Lilibeth was interested in was showing how the women try to mimic the way male bikers act. The third Danish artist, Nikolaj Recke studied painting but now works with sculpture-installation. He likes to work with nature showing us slides of an installation where he filled the gallery floor with clover. The idea was for people to take off their shoes and walk around on the clover and search for good luck through finding four leaf clover. The final Danish artist of the evening, Kirstine Roepstorff makes art through mixed-media focusing on collage. She started by using images from National Geographic, remembering that during childhood she used to look at the beautiful pictures found within it's pages and imagining going to these exotic and wonderful places. So now she uses images like these to try and show the reality of these places in comparison to what we are fed through out media culture. Of the four artists my favourites were Nikolaj Recke and Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen. I am hoping that on Saturday I will get a chance to go by the gallery were they are showing and write a review of the work they showing in the coming weeks. I saw it briefly yesterday but would like to go back when I have a chance and sit to watch the video.