Ditte Ejlerskov and Johan Furåker
Camilla Boemio speaks with artists Ditte Ejlerskov and Johan Furåker about their latest collaborative exhibition, Equilibrium, at Gammelgaard in Denmark.
Camilla Boemio (CB): Would you please introduce your new show, Equilibrium?
Ejlerskov and Furåker: An equilibrium is a state where two opposites meet in a balance, striving for harmony and stability. This exhibition looks at duality and spirituality, concepts we individually explore through different world views across time and cultures. The show reflects universal energy forms hidden under our secularized perception of everyday life and rationality. We look at cultural memories and remnants processed in a contemporary and futuristic context.
CB: Which question or theme would you say is most central to your collaborative work?
Ejlerskov and Furåker: We have moved away from portraiture and are now working more with the myths and histories of human life. What drives us as a species? Have we lost important information? Has modern science framed religion and alternate histories and sciences as untruthful for a reason? What can we draw from our cultural history that tries to answer some of those questions?
Equilibrium exhibition (installation view), 2023, Gammelgaard
CB: Johan, your work circles around unlikely life stories and truths that are stranger than fiction. How do art history, classical literature, and the Italian allure give you inspiration for your projects? I can lose myself in Enclosed Garden, part of your Paradisus Terrestris series. Can you introduce this project?
Johan Furåker: For a long time, I was fascinated by the idea of an actual historical paradise on earth. Over the years, I have explored cultural influences — for example, the Andalusian or Indian gardens. In an ongoing series of paintings titled Paradisus Terrestris, the Earthly Paradise, I depicted gardens from Antiquity and the Renaissance. The garden tradition displays a powerful urge to use greenery, gravel, architecture, and water to recreate a new world spatially. Those works act as a microcosm, gathering a range of cultural mythologies and seducing the observer into an imaginary paradise.
For many years I have been interested in conventional cultural history's answers to questions about the cradle of Humankind. However, the recent development of alternative histories and archeology has begun to take into account earlier myths and previously rejected paleoanthropological evidence. In the future, our understanding of ancient history might look very different from what is taught in schools today. I find this inspiring to my studio practice.
Johan Furåker, Myself When I am Real, 2022, oil on contour cut MDF, 28 x 22.5 inches
Johan Furåker, Renommée des Art, 2022, oil on contour cut MDF, 32.5 x 29 inches
CB: Ditte, your recent work focuses on the more formal aspects of your practice. This is represented, for example, in a series of large-format hand-painted color gradients, which work as a form of chromotherapy. Can you introduce them?
Ditte Ejlerskov: For several years, I have been cleansing my practice of external inspiration, such as mainstream culture, politics, general negativity, fear, and expectation-related input. These inputs were my go-to and source of inspiration. Those were what drove my practice. But I needed a fresh start. The dream gradients serve as healing for me in how I make them and how they work when they are finished. Of course, the process is the most important for me, like a tai chi exercise. Super slow movements with a large brush. Thin layers with medium but just a little color pigment in each layer. Chromotherapy’s effects were discussed as early as 1025 in the “Persian Canon of Medicine” and methodologically consist of the use of light in the form of color to balance the lacking energy in a person’s body - on physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental levels. In my practice these days, this claim is an ongoing investigation.
Ditte Ejlerskov, Dream Gradient (Fire Triptych 2 of 3), mixed media on canvas, 78.75 x 71 inches
CB: Ditte, you explore post-human futures in some of your work. What interests you about this possibility?
Ditte Ejlerskov: I love science fiction and am endlessly fascinated by the idea of post-human and techno-human species. However, I still see great potential for us as we are now. Looking at ancient religions and spiritual guides, I have discovered that there are pathways to developing and controlling our minds that are not present in mainstream culture or schooling today. We'll see much more spiritual practice included in our lives in the future - before we become post-human and before the end of our ecosystems.
Ditte Ejlerskov, still from The Walk, 2022, 2:33 min animated NFT film, edition of one
CB: Lastly, another question for you both: what do you need to create your work?
Ejlerskov and Furåker: We both have sketches of ideas and directions in our work piling up, so ideally, more time, larger studios, and a full staff would be great!
Ditte Ejlerskov and Johan Furåker
Equilibrium
Gammelgaard
Denmark
January 14 — February 26, 2023
Camilla Boemio is an internationally published author, curator, and member of the AICA (International Arts Critics) based in Rome. In 2013, Boemio was the co-associate curator of PORTABLE NATION: Disappearance as work in Progress – Approaches to Ecological Romanticism, the Maldives Pavilion at the 55th International art exhibition La Biennale di Venezia. In 2016, Boemio curated Diminished Capacity, the First Nigerian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale. Boemio’s recent curatorial projects include her role as co-associate curator at Pera + Flora + Fauna. The Story of Indigenousness and The Ownership of History, an official collateral event at the 59th International art exhibition La Biennale di Venezia, 2022. Invitations to speak include the Tate Liverpool, MUSE Science Museum, and the Cambridge Festival 2021, at Crassh, in the UK.