Jan Christensen »You Are Always Alone In The Cinema (J. Monk)«

Nordenhake Stockholm starts the autumn season by showing a wallpainting by the Norwegian artist Jan Christensen. His paintings can be described as deconstructed, graphically lively, intricate layers of images moving in any and all directions. Christensen draws upon a vast number of references in his work - to the languages of our times and the life around us, communicating the aesthetics of our media-based culture.

Jan Christensen paints directly on to the wall where the work often tends to expand in the room using both floor and ceiling. Most of his work deals with time and movement, which is emphasized by the medium itself, forcing the viewer to move around in the room in order to take in the whole composition.

The starting point for the work at Nordenhake is a drawing by the British artist Jonathan Monk that Christensen saw and got inspired by. The drawing, titled "You are always alone in the cinem"a, shows a lonely figure, seen from the back, in front of a white screen. Christensen incorporates Monk's melancholic image into his wallpainting, and gives it a central position in the composition. The backdrop consists of layers of half transparent filmstrips that stretch along the walls, reminiscent of a film in the process of being developed or an artwork being decoded. Although the work communicates a sense of loneliness it allows certain signals between people in different places at different times to slip through.

Jan Christensen was born in Copenhagen. He is educated at The National College of Art and Design in Oslo. Since a few years back he lives and works in Berlin. This is Jan Christensen's first exhibition at Galerie Nordenhake.