Peter Callensen

Born: 1967

Nationality: Danish
First impressions: My first impression of Peter Callesen is that he is a very skilled artist because he either cuts designs out and makes them into a 3D forms or he reverses the image; like the image on the left, the roses in the cut out sections are alive and blooming but the roses he has cut out and placed opposite the living flowers are dead and wilting witch could symbolize life and death.

Title of painting: Running red poppies
        Description: 

·                     two tonal

·                     simple sillouettes of flowers

·                     pretty

·                     alive and dead poppies

·                     white paper with red flowers opposite.

·                     contrasting colours

       

  Formal Elements:

·                     bright colours

·                     eye-catching 

·                     cut out

      

 Background information:

where he studied:

1997-00 Goldsmiths College, London
1994-97 Det Jyske Kunstakademi, Århus
1993-94 Århus Art School (Foundation Course)
1990-93 Århus School of Architecture

Exhibitions:

2011

House of Paper - Sørlandets Art Museum, Norway.

Out of Nothing - Haugar Vestfold Art Museum, Tønsberg, Norway

2010

Out of Nothing - Mjelby Art Museum, Halmstad, Sweden

Skin of Paper - Nikolaj Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center

2009

Out of Nothing - Trapholt, Kolding, Denmark.

Out of Nothing - The Museum of Religious Art, Lemvig, Denmark.

2008

Perry Rubenstein Gallery, New York.

Paperman, Helene Nyborg Contemporary, Copenhagen.

2007

Unfolding, Emily Tsingou Gallery, London.

Himmelrum, Kunsthallen Nikolaj in Copenhagen.

Himmelrum at Brandt’s in Odense, Denmark

2006

Castle Museum, Nottingham, England

ALIVE, BUT DEAD, Helene Nyborg Contemporary, Copenhagen

2005

do ART gallery, Seoul, Korea

Egg ballet, Odense Performance Festival

Concert for birds, performance on Christianshavns Volde in Copenhagen

2004

emilyTsingou gallery, London

Mirage, Galleri Koch und Kesslau, Berlin

2003

Snowdrifting, The Kiosk Project, London

2001

The Life of The Dying Swan, Gallery Tommy Lund, Copenhagen

White Shadows, installation & performance, Esbjerg Museum of Art, Denmark

2000

Der Sterbende Schwan, Gallery KUNST auf KAMPNAGEL, Hamburg

Jukebox, performance at Gallery Muu, Helsinki

Hvorfor blir det nat mor, three days performance, Gallery Tommy Lund, Copenhagen

1999

The Dying Swan is back, performance at Goldsmiths College's exhibitionspace

Sailing, performance at Overgaden, Copenhagen

Happy Birthday, performance in Goldsmiths College's canteen, London

Castle, two weeks happening at Goldsmiths College, London

1998

The Dying swan, performance at Det Fynske Kunstakademis Udstillingssted, Odense

The Dying swan, performance at Goldsmiths College's exhibitionspace

1997

Peter R. Callesen præsenterer Peter R. Callesen, happening in rum 46, Århus

Little Peter Spiderman III, performance & installation in rum 46, Århus

Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe", happening & installation in rum 46, Århus

Callesen is known for his exceptional talent in combining the minimalism of a big crisp white sheet of paper with the complexity of meticulously cut and folded paper and uses the two to build out some really beautiful compositions. Particularly noteworthy are his works where the remains of the cut and folded objects are literally shadows of the objects former self. He uses the positive and negative space to tell a sometimes-dark story about the past and future of his subject using only a white sheet of paper.

He creates intricate papercut artwork from A4 paper and in large-scale installations. Each work is created from one sheet of paper, be it three-dimensional flowers falling from a bouquet's negative, a hummingbird flying from the page, or a child-size castle crafted from a billboard-sized paper. He uses paper because he says it is "probably the most common and consumed media used for carrying information today," but we "rarely notice the actual materiality" of it. There is a tragic quality to most of his subjects, whether it's a flower dying, an angel locked in a birdcage, or even an apple reduced to its core. So the frail and delicate paper medium underlines that element of calamity.

He says: "The paper cut sculptures explore the probable and magical transformation of the flat sheet of paper into figures that expand into the space surrounding them. The negative and absent 2 dimensional space left by the cut, points out the contrast to the 3 dimensional reality it creates, even though the figures still stick to their origin without the possibility of escaping. In that sense there is also an aspect of something tragic in many of the cuts".

Analysis:

·                     I like the way he has shadowed the design and made it different by having alive and dead flowers.

My responce to Peter Callesen:

I used objects from my memory box to create my responces to Callesen; first I took a plain piece of pater and drew out my design then I chose parts to cut out. I used a cutting board and a cutting knife to cut of this also it is important to use a cutting board so that you dont dammage the surface you are working on, also the knifes are very sharpe and you can esily cut yourself so you never cut near your hand or when the blade is pointing towards you because if your hand slips witch can sometimes happen you can hurt yourself.