Just noise

Mads Gamdrup (b. 1967) is one of the Nordic region’s most significant innovators
in the world of photographic art. Since the 1990s, his work has
focused upon his fascination for colour.
In 2002, Gamdrup began using colour as the supreme protagonist within
his work. As form, as phenomenon, as abstraction, as representative of
another dimension. Both in One Hour with Birds and the yet-to-be-completed
series Monochrome Colour Noise, he takes inspiration from several
colour theories, including those of Goethe and Newton. The result
is a series of abstract images that solely consists of dotted, striped and
square colour blocks. For his Just Noise exhibition, the artist has created
around 20 large colour photographs, each measuring 180 x 220 cm. These
monumental works continue Gamdrup’s work with colour, which he constantly
challenges and radicalises. The abstract-concrete studies of colour’s
potential, and particularly its dependence on light and dark, stand
as seemingly pure abstractions that are formally based upon the monochrome
circle. The colours flicker before the eyes creating a visual ‘noise’.
This phenomenon focusses our attention on the visual experience, the way
we perceive colour, and ultimately on reality itself.

By Anna Krogh, Curator, Kunsthallen Brandts