JACOB BROSTRUP

Future Nostalgia

4 - 25 March

It is with great pleasure we are now ready to present Jacob Brostrup in a new solo show.
Since starting working together in 2010 the artist has developed enormously, not least gaining tremendous recognition after his commissioned work at Christiansborg (the Danish parlament) with 7 large paintings in 2018.

Jacob Brostrup (b. 1973) has gained great recognition over the years for his ability to work with a complex imagery and at the same time work with the conflicting elements between the layers.

In Brostrup's works, we are getting close to these complex, and for us, more or less fictional universes. In the juxtapositions between nature and culture, fields of tension are created between several realities, where they intertwine and exist side by side in the same space. The main motif is 'disturbed' by the many underlying motifs and several transparent layers and elements are often hidden and first discovered after several glances. Whether we are outside or inside can often be difficult to determine unequivocally.

The photograph is Brostrup's 'sketchbook', but as he himself expresses it, the photograph is simply a limited snapshot. He wants to expand this snapshot through the painting. The quality of the painting is precisely that it can reflect several temporal dimensions at the same time.
As in a collage, Brostrup thus juxtaposes several realities, whereby a blurring of the familiar, the organic in nature and the domestic setting occurs.

About the exhibition's title Brostrup says:
'Future Nostalgia' is about the inevitability of reaching a point where the experiences are behind you. But with the future ahead, you can turn it around and say seize the day and enjoy it now, because in the future it will be (only) memories.

Brostrup's special technique, of pulling the not yet dry oil paint in long, grooved strokes, is a distinctive feature, and something that gives the works a vibrating, almost trembling expression. Throughout the history of art, veiling or blurring has been a widely used technique, and with these grooved strokes an effect is achieved that there is something behind, something to which we do not have direct access and we are therefore curiously drawn close to the works.
The works appear through these vibrations, with great dynamism and energy, and we are struck through the complex scenarios by an emotional clash between unrest and peace. Here, as in life, one cannot be obtained without the other. It will always be present at the same time and place. We live in a fluid world where nothing is stationary. We and the works are thus in constant motion and are present in several places at once.