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Morten Schelde
Red Noise Meditation

3rd floor
20. September - 18. January 2015

Nature was a focal point, both visually and thematically, in Morten Schelde's exhibition Red Noise Meditation. Forest lakes, hills, trees and a profound darkness between the tree trunks emerged from enor­mous ink drawings and took form as a panoramic landscape. On the floor, sticks were scattered – like twigs on the forest floor of nature. Morten Schelde had created an exhi­bition where we encountered nature with our bodies as much as with our eyes. He thus invited us to occupy the scenario with our full presence, and to reflect over how we as human beings encounter nature and give it meaning.

Four young boys appeared in the landscape. Dressed in wellingtons and practical outdoor clothes, they gazed disoriented into space. Their experience of nature was direct, not yet imprinted with handed-down cultural notions of nature, such as Romanticism’s nature ideal or present-day political visions of climatic doom. In the sculptural floor element of the exhibition, and in a series of small drawings, the natural was displayed in other dimen­sions. The many sticks on the floor were twigs found in the landscape and subsequently cut smooth and painted red. Despite their clear character, they thus no longer possessed their original ‘naturalness’. In small drawings Schelde had painted simple nature motifs in bright psychedelic colours giving the nature installation a dreaming, mys­ti­cal atmosphere.

Morten Schelde (b. 1972) graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2001. Since his time at the Academy he has consistently worked with mono­chrome draw­­ings, mainly in red or black pencil. Over the years Schelde has expanded his prac­tice with fusions of drawing and photography as well as painting. Morten Schelde finds the subjects of his art in the mythological material of life, folk tale and science. Early examples are the suburban residential area of his childhood in Birkerød, in the work series Children of Suburbia, as well as the world of science in drawings created during Schelde’s participation in the Galathea 3 Expedition in 2006-2007.