Opening reception Saturday May 6 from 12-15

Martin Erik Andersen’s third exhibition at Galleri Riis will be an exhibition of the hidden. The different wall hung objects are silver-plated. Andersen’s studies of diverse cultural aesthetic expressions are very much about the destruction of hierarchies. No man is an island, and no carpet is made of an isolated pattern. Everything is related and copied. Here, Andersen’s interest in carpets reach a kind of climax as he covers them with silver. The tactile surface becomes a shield. The perception is somehow tilted, viewing becomes more of a partial blindness. Crocodile heads become abstract as does the carpets. But as with all artefacts there is more to them than meets the eye, there are travels in time and space and an inner journey to be done in order to find one’s own position within the exhibition room and fully grasp these works. Andersen deconstructs and constructs at the same time. His titles are works in their own right, the language as sculpture, building a parallel structure next to the objects.

Martin Erik Andersen (b. 1964 in Copenhagen) works with sculpture and installations combining a variety of media including sound, lights, moving images and living plants. Andersen studied at Al-Fonun Al-Gamila (The Fine Arts Academy) in Cairo (1989-90), and graduated from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (1992). Since 2009, Andersen has been a professor of sculpture at the Danish Academy of Fine Arts, and he lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark.