Artists

Ivan Andersen

Ivan Andersen’s practice delves into the mutable and unstable qualities inherent within painting without compromising its integrity. Manipulating and stretching the medium of painting (sometimes literally), he works through its material potential to reveal underlying visual structures and patterns. Often uniting realism and abstraction within the same work, his subject matter varies from figuration to landscapes and deftly drafted architectural spaces. The surface tactility of his paintings is achieved through painting on MDF and plywood panel, including mixed media such as paper collage, fabric and yarn. His sculptures also question the format of painting—via the ‘expanded field’—by physically incorporating painting with objects such as furniture and plants to create surprisingly hybrid works. Vibrant colour is a central feature of his painting: ‘Ivan Andersen thinks in colours and with colours. His technically equilibristic treatment of colour has always been visible…the colour treatment has been allowed to sing out clearly, as a vital and independent way to create a pictorial narrative’, writes artist Jesper Christiansen.