Martin Asbæk Gallery is thrilled to present the group show Human; Nature in relation to Copenhagen Photo Festival 2017.
Besides our own artists the gallery has invited three artists; Adam Jeppesen (DK), Katrín Elvarsdóttir (IS) and Hervé Saint-Hélier (FR).

In this new exhibition we focus on nature seen through the photographic medium. We show works that re ect the artistic look on nature as well as the artist’s interpretation of it in relation to the human mind. We want to set up an exhibition that focuses on a fusion between nature as a limitless term that embraces our humanity and nature in its own form. Some of the issues that will be highlighted are how we use nature to explain ourselves and how we seek refuge in it when the city noise becomes too stressful and overwhelming. What aesthetic power does nature possess that has made it repeatedly appear in art history? The exhibition does not seek to give any concrete answers but merely create reactions and ignite thoughts about these questions.

Nature in Man & Man in Nature
After mankind nature has through history been the most important inspiration to artists. Our relationship to nature can
be interpreted in many ways and nature as a phenomenon itself is almost as complex as the concept of art. Nature and man’s relation to it is of high relevance in today’s society. We pace forward in full speed, and life in the city distances us more and more from nature. We often forget to look out for the earth and nature that are making it possible for us to lead the life we do. In this group show you are however able to experience nature through the artist’s’ incredible interpretations hereof and dream yourself away from the tolls of everyday life and the huzzle and buzzle of the city.

There is a similarity in our experience of art versus nature. Both phenomena poses an ability to open up the gate into our deepest feelings and thoughts, which we often ourselves have a hard time putting into words. We thus look forward to welcoming you to an exhibition that merges these two concepts through the works of talented and current artists.
Varying use of the photographic medium.

Human; Nature shows works that all have their own peculiar use of photography, that has been printed on a wide variety of mediums. Astrid Kruse Jensen’s works in fabric from her latest series Floating, floats slightly above the floor while hanging freely from the ceiling. In Ebbe Stub Wittrup’s After Space Odyssey the photographs are printed in a monochrome complimentary colour to a red front-glass in a plexiglass box, where the colours contrasts each other making
the photography appear neutral and grey toned seen through the red frontal glass. Adam Jeppesen has in his Flatlands works, worked with photogravure, that portrays hauntingly beautiful landscapes from his 487 days of travel between the Arctic and Antarctic. Helen Sear’s puzzling works are photographs of the french forest environment in the fall that she by hand, using a tablet, has drawn colourful ramications on that seems to have no end. In contrast are Elina Brotherus’ self portraits in a gold, desert-like and fawn landscape. Meanwhile Eva Koch’s red poppies burst into bloom in time laps over and over again in a video installation and awakens a curiosity in the beholder, but also a form of peace and quiet. Katrín Elvarsdóttir has photographed colourful trailers with a landscape of mountains in the background. Nicolai Howalt has played with the photograph of an ancient and mysterious tree. Hervé Saint-Hélier’s analogue photographs of nature and man has an intriguing, peculiar and soulfilled expression. The poetic abstraction that emerges from the photographs takes us back to the sketch and blur of a haiku. Always capturing reality vividly, this travelling photographer is a bystander bestowed with an eye of intense sensory between tangible and heavenly. Trine Søndergaards works from Dress of Mourning portrays images of a woman dressed in traditional mourning suits from the region of Dragør in Denmark in hilly black and white landscapes, that leaves behind thoughts about sorrow and death, which in its own way also can be understood as something natural but at the same time uncomprehending and mysterious.