“My paintings are like residues of things that were once much clearer and more resolved. They function like visual memories: traces of perturbed, calm, or even exited states of mind that have now passed. Intimate records of experience and transformation."
Thorbjørn Bechmann, born in 1966, lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark. Bechmann's primary practice is non-representative painting, exploring questions of process and representation in abstract languages. Central concerns are questions of communication, sensibility, and a non-representative language where notions of thinking are articulated through the artist's hands and eye. Thus his works are process-oriented and are layered with a multitude of shades, hues, and shadows.
“My paintings are like residues of things that were once much clearer and more resolved. They function like visual memories: traces of perturbed, calm, or even exited states of mind that have now passed. Intimate records of experience and transformation. Intimate records of experience and transformation. While painting is sometimes considered a reflection of identity, I imagine the act of painting as a proposal for how identity comes to be. It is a becoming or an unfolding—sometimes even a failing—rather than an endpoint. Based on the experience of being - and the memory of this experience.”
The experience of Bechmann’s work is an experience of transparency. It points in the direction of the luminous quality of both the painting and the world. Thorbjørn Bechmann is educated at the Royal Danish Academy of the Arts. Besides his work as an artist, he has an extensive curatorial praxis. He is represented in public and private collections, including the Danish Arts Foundation.