Vinterbilleder

We are pleased to present a new exhibition by Danish artist Torben Ribe. Torben Ribe often makes quasi-abstract paintings to act as props in large installations, but for his show at KIOSK he presents a series of almost classical landscape paintings, all modest in size. Like the title of the show, Vinterbilleder (Winter Images), all the individual works borrow their titles from renowned Danish painter Per Kirkeby. The paintings doesn’t exactly resemble Kirkeby’s grandiose works though, being that most of them aren’t much bigger than cakes able to fit the oven and the painterly surfaces only partially hides personal imagery, bills and over-the-counter medicines. Maybe the works looks more like a kindergarten’s take on Turner, without the necessary adult supervision to avoid one big mess as an end result or a sloppy unfinished monochrome (if such thing exist). The exhibited works do though share a common altmodische feel with Kirkeby, a trait that’s often associated with Scandinavian landscape painting and the special Nordic melancholia that goes along with it. Spring never comes and even the summer nights feels cold. The bills and images of modern medicine that functions as a background, doesn’t exactly make it any more cheerful. Take some pain killers and lay down, this landscape is not going to get better any time soon.