Open Nerves - Group Exhibition

Carla Kjærgaard’s practice stems from a fascination with the many existential layers and darker sides of human nature. Kjærgaard’s paintings confront what lies beneath these layers, as well as the mystery and, ultimately, the clarity found within the human shadow. Carla Kjærgaard actively probes the things we suppress, along with the fear and confusion that arise when we are exposed to and confronted with what has been hidden and repressed. Kjærgaard believes that we can easily feel alone in our subtle encounters with shame, fear, loneliness, anger, humiliation, jealousy, grief, and selfishness. Her works are therefore an attempt to remind the viewer that, however different we may be, we are also fundamentally alike. She consciously works within the tension between the unknown and the familiar, the grotesque and the absurd, the isolated and the superficial. Carla Kjærgaard’s paintings project the human exterior turned inside out.

There is a tendency to approach Dino Cama’s work through his biography. It is an understandable impulse. References to the former Yugoslavia, migration, trauma, inherited memory, and family history recur throughout his practice. Cama does not narrate history. He creates conditions in which history becomes material. In his practice, painting is never confined to the image. It extends into wood, architecture, found objects, textiles, and fragments whose previous lives remain active within the work. Scratches, knots, stains, and structural imperfections are not corrected; they are incorporated into the logic of the composition. Surfaces are sanded back, repainted, and exposed once more. Construction and erosion unfold simultaneously, creating objects that appear less like finished compositions than something continuously negotiated. Every visible gesture acknowledges another that has disappeared beneath it. His works do not ask to be read through identity alone. They ask how experience becomes embedded in material, how history occupies surfaces, and how memory continues to act long after narrative has fallen silent. Painting becomes less a physical act and more an act of listening – to surfaces, to time, and to the histories and cycles that continue to inhabit the present without announcing themselves.

Lundbohm primarily works with sculpture, installation, and text. Through a combination of different materials and techniques, she explores questions of human existence in a process centred on themes such as human needs and drives, as well as reflections on life and death. She often draws on her own experiences with psychiatry, illness, trauma, violence, and death. Her work is characterised by distinct narratives and rich symbolism that bring the most vulnerable aspects of the human condition to the forefront.