Magnus Frederik Clausen and Mads Lindberg at Freddy

Artists: Magnus Frederik Clausen and Mads Lindberg

Exhibition title: Recent Paintings

Venue: Freddy, New York, US

Date: August 13 – September 10, 2022

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Freddy

Recently, paintings weren’t here. Reality was. Just a number of individuals walking around, each with some eyes that were or were not very different from current eyes. What do you see when it has not yet been framed or pre-seen. How does a forest look. Or a bridge, a human being far away. The sheer boundaries/the messy mix-up between image and fantasy. This is what a pious day could look like, this is the exact moment we could be in.

It has become an option to look at years in a manner that is as tangible as weather on your face. What’s more comprehensible: oceans or a watch. And did the world even know it existed before eyes and hands began to materially contain it. Did we. Pictures are containers, they are testimonies to the fact that things have been seen before I saw them. That passion and tragedy are common. Pictures are an excess, a cornucopian abundance of emotional capability no matter how tight and minimal their logic seems. Straightforwardness is not an escape from poetry. Neither are facts. Underneath every conceptual armour is a silly little heart drooling for sunsets.

Hours passing and springs returning are the opposite of coincidence.
Art is the opposite of coincidence.
Coincidence is the opposite of pathos.
A painting is the opposite of indifference.
Romance is the opposite of irony.
Nature is the opposite of illustration.

I enter life without knowing it’s a life, I approach a meadow unaware of the fact that its saturated green will eventually imply fairytale cuteness, I adore and observe and seduce and allow days to slide through me as an indistinct, stressless whole. I am probably sentimental and pagan, attentive to coherences, a lover of details, but I don’t exchange my potentially poignant observance to functionless objects of emotion.

Then comes blue and gold and God and a seemingly pure desire to pass on internal importance and external sublime. Is it generosity or ego. Merely looking at the sky is no longer enough, landscapes need to be copied now, flattened, turned into something they’re not. And also my horse needs some pictorial glory. Reality is gradually multiplied, certain evenings need capturing, certain curls and lips, eventually certain towers. Certain glamourous meals. Since a minute is just a minute I need to store them. Stored, square time is a substantial reason for my growing sense of living a life among others. For my idea of beauty – though no tree in this particularly exquisite afternoon needs my attention and skill to be beautiful.

And I perfect and perfect until perfect is boring or expanded. Endless amounts of epic scenery next to the unparalleled sensation of my own damp morning. Sharing is normalizing. De-dramatizing. I understand that living is picturing or I understand that pictures are not reality. I long for dissolving, I long for anti-ego and literality, some concrete units at least. I almost deny the picture. Icy cerulean is not winter, yellow is not a specific juncture, time is not digits. I rehearse sensibility with my eyes because it’s already there.

-Nanna Friis

Magnus Frederik Clausen and Mads Lindberg, Recent Paintings, 2022, exhibition view, Freddy, New York

Magnus Frederik Clausen and Mads Lindberg, Recent Paintings, 2022, exhibition view, Freddy, New York

Magnus Frederik Clausen and Mads Lindberg, Recent Paintings, 2022, exhibition view, Freddy, New York

Magnus Frederik Clausen and Mads Lindberg, Recent Paintings, 2022, exhibition view, Freddy, New York

Magnus Frederik Clausen and Mads Lindberg, Recent Paintings, 2022, exhibition view, Freddy, New York

Magnus Frederik Clausen and Mads Lindberg, Recent Paintings, 2022, exhibition view, Freddy, New York

Magnus Frederik Clausen and Mads Lindberg, Recent Paintings, 2022, exhibition view, Freddy, New York

Magnus Frederik Clausen and Mads Lindberg, Recent Paintings, 2022, exhibition view, Freddy, New York

Magnus Frederik Clausen and Mads Lindberg, Recent Paintings, 2022, exhibition view, Freddy, New York