Politikens Hus gallery (photo: Ati Metwaly)
Mathilde Fenger, a Danish artist known primarily for her classical oil paintings, explores life in Afghanistan through her paintings exhibited at Politikens Hus gallery in Copenhagen.
The exhibition, which opened in August, looks at the social conditions, patrols, field hospitals, and troops the artist encountered during her 17-day stay at Camp Bastion, a British military base in Helmand Province, and Camp Price in 2010. The exhibition is the result of over two thousand photographs and sketches.
Fenger wanted to portray the situation in Afghanistan as an important historical event and shed light on a war that tears apart the lives of many civilians. Some of her works include bloody representations of a community soaked in the realities of war.
Though at times drastic in its thematic content, Fenger's paintings reach a touching aesthetic realisation in which the harsh reality is entwined with cultural elements of the community represented. In some paintings, interaction between soldiers and local people is underlined. At other times, while portraying utopian-like realities, Fenger creates moving disparities, such as soldiers walking though the fields of flowers, an image contrasting with their military mission.
Bordering the historic City Hall of Copenhagen, Politikens Hus gallery is on the ground floor of a Danish media company of the same name. Politikens Hus media was established in 2003 as a merger of the publishing companies of the major broadsheet newspapers Jyllands-Posten and Politiken.
The gallery holds regular art exhibitions which focus on contemporary Danish artists, working in different mediums and tackling a variety of themes.
(Photo: Ati Metwaly)
(Photo: Ati Metwaly)
(Photo: Ati Metwaly)
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