Installation view from the exhibition Collection in Action, Skovgaard Museet, 2023.
Collection of Skovgaard Museet, Viborg, Denmark.
Thanks to Ny Carlsbergfondet.
The Hedge Paintings is an ongoing series of paintings (2009-) in which a plastic hedge is the canvas.
In Denmark, living in a house surrounded by a hedge is common. A hedge represents both the good, quiet life behind in suburbia and, at the same time, frustration and a lack of freedom for some people. In Danish, privet-fascism is a well-known term referring to the most common hedge plant, the privet. It critiques the often conservative and petty-bourgeois values life behind the privet hedge represents for some people.
The Hedge paintings connect two major directions in painting: The conceptual monochrome painting and the long history of landscape painting.
The Monochrome Hedge paintings aim to add new perspectives to Yves Klein’s and Piero Manzoni’s monochrome paintings from the late 1950s—1960s while connecting to the history of landscape painting.