Martin Bigum

This retrospective exhibition - which toured three Scandinavian museums - was seen by 17.000 people

Martin Bigum received his breakthrough in 1997 - 1998 when four leading Danish art museums arranged a joint presentation of his works from 1991 - 1997 entitled The Adventures of ART. It was largely a retrospective, in spite of the artist´s young age (born in 1966). The exhibition covered not only painting, but also other examples of artistic expression such as installations, photography and video art, as well as poetry. In the wake of this manifestation Bigum´s art has been represented in museum exhibitions and at art fairs in both Europe and the US.

The exhibition The Homecoming - or: The World According to ART consists of 13 works from 1997 - 2002. This time it is mainly paintings, a selection representing the best of the artist. It constitutes the first time a major collection of Bigum´s work has been presented before a Scandinavian audience.

The pictures speak of both a homecoming and a leave-taking. The public is able to witness both an artistic departure and a new path sought by the artist. To start with the latter, that is to say the leave-taking: throughout the 1990s Bigum consistently used one figure, a little cloaked man, ART - to personify the concept of art. These are his last pictures involving ART. The figure, with a scythe over his shoulder and with his large nose sticking out from under the monk´s hood, has served as our guide from one picture to another. Art has taken us through a universe of its own, either to offer us new experiences or to wield the scythe once more.

In a strange blend of seriousness and play, irony and proximity, the everyday and the eternal, ART is the center of pictures that are at one and the same time mystical, loving ang entertaining. They are also commentaries ona kind of art that was declared dead long ago, but which nevertheless is very much alive in these pictures.

The ART paintings represent The World According to ART part of the exhibition. The Homecoming is obviously precisely that. This part concerns the conditions surrounding "coming home" to acknowledgement and being able to recognize its inherent paradoxial ambiguity. Whether you insisted on it or appreciated the intensity of this crucial juncture or not - once it is a fact and you apitulate before it, the road forks.The viewer faces a pictorial and semantic oddysyey that may call for reflection, or just a flash of poetic insight.

Martin Bigum and the museums involved would like to express their gratitude to the many collectors, public collections and museums - in Denmark, Sweden, Holland, Germany and the US - for their willingness to make their works available for such a long period of time.

Göran Christenson
Malmö Art Museum

Elisabeth Haglund
Borås Art Museum

Eirìkur Thorlaksson
Reykjavik Art Museum -
Kjarvalstadir

The Adventures of ART - foreword
Barry Schwabsky interview: English - Danish

Tilegnet min morbror Jørgen Bak (1941 - 2001)

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