Henrik Godsk A Space Ruled by Rhythm and Harmony

The deconstructed universe of Henrik Godsk is inhabited by creatures and characters that thrive in-between, through and because of strict restrictions set by the artist. A space ruled by rhythm and harmony, where out of tune colours and lines create vibrations that emanate from the flat surface of the canvas.

Who are the people that we see in your work?
— I call them imaginary portraits because they are not really depicting specific human beings, but rather characters. For me, their gender is not set, although people often define them as female figures. That’s alright with me, it is not so important. In my mind, they come from the future but lived in the past because there is so much art and cultural history embodied in them in the way that all images are somehow built on pre-existing images.

When reading other texts about you and your work, modernist painters like Picasso or Léger are often mentioned as references. Would you say that your work follows a modernist lineage?
— I would say I have one leg solidly in art history, but I am also very occupied with contemporary visual culture. When you look at my work there are some obvious formal references to modernism. However, the key to understanding my practice lies in my obsession with constructedness - whether it is a still life, a creature painting, an imaginary portrait or a sculpture. You could say that the modernists searched for the ultimate truth, but the postmodernists deconstructed that idea and claimed there was nothing left to believe in. Since postmodernism stretched modernism to a point where it fell apart, I believe we have reached a point where we learnt from history and instead, we are trying to establish new, temporary, things to believe in rather than an ultimate forever lasting truth. This is why it is very important for me that the process of construction is visible in all my motifs, to make it evident that this is not a realist mimicking of reality, but a character or creature that I decided to put together to find a new coherence, a new universe. Even though I make portraits that are artificial, I still truly believe they represent something human, whatever that means.

You work with a very distinct colour palette, what do colours represent to you?
— I am colour blind actually, so I don’t see colour the same way most people do - I see them more as tones. Of course, I can read on the tube what the colour is, and I know the theory about complementary colours etc, so I am not completely clueless. It is more that people say that my grey is blue, or my greens are brown - and I just can’t see that. For me, they behave more like music. Sometimes I draw beforehand, sometimes I don’t, but I always begin with the nose because that dictates the scale of the rest of the face and also determines the rest of the colours. So, it becomes a chain reaction of choices. In Yellow Dress for example I used a darker orange so I could have a lighter background. I build my palette through the interplay of colour fields so that there is usually a darker colour next to a lighter, to always maintain balance between the fields. But sometimes in the process I break my own rules also. When I create, everything needs to be in total harmony, but to make the work interesting something also has to be out of key to create a vibration or tension within.

I guess this also enforces the constructedness of the painting?
— Yes, and I use the same system of rules and interaction when it comes to the lines. Some of them are created with the aid of masking tape to be completely sharp and straight (like autotuning), and next to them I create a line only with my hand and brush. These lines are also straight, but not as perfect. This again creates a tension between the different components of the painting - a vibration. Like digital and analogue together. Normally I create my lines in one brush stroke only - this dogmatic approach means that if you make mistakes you just have to leave them in and that is honest in my opinion. You don’t hide
the process; you make it visible to the viewer.

Another aspect of the process is the physical part. The brush strokes can be seen as a registration of my bodily movements. Sadly, the audience at an art exhibition is never allowed to touch the art, but to me one of the best ways to experience art is when you can touch it, feel the texture, hear the sound it makes. It is almost like as if the painting has flesh. I love this English expression about seeing things in the flesh. For me it has a double meaning – to see something in person, but also that there is a bodily experience of the art. Because in order to really experience a painting you have to see it in the flesh, it’s a physical thing. Also, I never work with shadows created by a darker nuance of colour. If there are shadows in my work, they are not imitations of a shadow in the picture plane, but real shadows created by the light and the varieties in thickness of the paint which I achieve by combining the use of a spatula and different types of brushes. This is something that you can only appreciate when you see the work up close and in person, which adds to the tension between digital and analogue. I like the fact that not everything can be translated to an image or a social media post.

How did these rules you mention influence the works you are showing at CFHILL?
— I am very dogmatic when I paint, I enjoy creating restrictions for myself. This way I have more freedom, believe it or not. By minimising the amount of choices, I can dive deeper into the things that really matter. Every time I start a new series of paintings, I know my rule set, but I always force myself to change something. For example, I only started working on the hair in the portraits this last year, so that is new. Once I added this element the whole image changed. If you look at the lines in Fade to Red, they look like a plant maybe? But this visual element is actually comprised of the same type of lines as the hair in Yellow Dress. The organic lines included in the three still lifes I am showing at CFHILL will be the first time I am introducing this particular element. So, I guess you could say that when I add a new “word” to my vocabulary, it becomes part of my visual language.

If we continue with the music metaphor, you could also say that you add another tone
to your register maybe?
— Yes exactly. I also wanted this series of works to create a melody when they were installed together. The exhibition space is very symmetrical with a high ceiling and white walls and by combining works in different sizes from small to big, my aim was to create a rhythm that worked against the symmetry of the room. Another aspect of the spatial experience is that the size of the room allows the audience to view the works from a distance and this made it possible for me to go up in scale. Yellow Dress for example is 1,90 m high and the face takes up 2/3 of the canvas which creates an interesting effect if you stand in one end of the room and see it hanging at the other end.

How does this idea of melody or rhythm relate to your exhibition title, 'No Piano'?
— I chose this title because to me my paintings represent moments that are frozen in time. And if a painting is frozen in time, it means is has become silent, at least in my mind. I found the phrase in a Thomas Pynchon novel and I really liked it. It doesn’t mean silence per se, but something more open.

Would you say you are you more of a painter than a sculptor?
— I primarily consider myself a painter, and the sculptures as a natural extension of my paintings. They consist of flat elements that are raised in space. I wanted to create something that was not welded but jointed like a body, and that of course set technical limitations to finding the right balance etc. This way their constructedness relate to the paintings and, in theory, they could be taken apart. Like the characters in my portraits, the creatures don’t represent a specific animal or insect even though they have elements that make them look “real”. I was inspired by medieval paintings featuring fantasy animals that represented the unknowable, unexplainable or uncanny. When I was creating these works during the pandemic, I had a feeling that the whole world was in front of something we couldn’t quite understand or control, and this influenced me to blend iconography from a different era to comment on contemporary existence. But maybe in the future there will be creatures living on Earth who look like this, who knows?

But it is quite rare that you work with sculptures, right?
— For this exhibition I really thought the space called for something sculptural. So, instead of having “only” paintings where the sole focus of the audience would be on what is hanging on the walls, I created something that would activate the entire room in a different way. I worked for several years with reducing the elements to find my own way of creating these three-dimensional objects, using the same dogmatic method of combining geometrical elements as when I paint. If you look at the sculptures closely, you will realise that almost every part, including the negative spaces, form a triangle. That was my main “rule” when I created them. The artistic process included making cardboard models which were then used as templates for the laser cutting. They look very perfect at first glance, or autotuned if you will, but if you look closer a tail might be a bit crooked etc. So, in short, the process involves a tension between the hand and the machine. Previously, I have hand painted sculptural pieces, but these new ones - Lover, Rose and Drifter - are spray painted. Firstly, because the sheet metal called for a calmer surface. Secondly, I wanted the focus to be on the shape of all the triangles which is also why they only have two colours.  Essentially, the sculptures are three-dimensional versions of the creature paintings in the exhibition. When shown together in the space, they create one coherent universe in harmony together with the other works.