EN/DE

The make or break with my works is whether they breathe or not, if they are not alive, I discard them. It's important to me that my works seem edible, not as in delicious, but as in a presence that is real in the world. I want the work to give a tactile feeling, it has to give a bodily sensation that transcends language and the conscious mind. 

It's a thing that is hard to define because it is not about craftsmanship or tricks, because there are plenty of painters that use thick lustrous brushstrokes whose painting seems lifeless, and then there are painters who barely use any paint whose works vibrate.

That's one of the places where painting really becomes interesting to me, because there is something there that we cannot understand, or at least, we haven’t discovered it yet. I think there is a big difference between knowing and understanding. And I work with, am interested in the knowing – you can know a painting even though you might not understand it – but it’s the knowing that has the most value not the conscious understanding. With knowing I mean recognizing in your bones. You might not understand what’s going on but you recognize “I know you (the painting) from somewhere, I’ve never seen you before, yet I’ve known you all my life”.


EN/DE

Marie Birkedal (1976) is a Danish artist graduated from Funen Art Academy (2010 MFA) based in Berlin since 2013. Marie Birkedal works with materiality, and entropic processes. She makes visceral haptic works exploring the essence of painting in a praxis she defines as “empathy and alchemy”.

Marie Birkedal’s work borrows from ancient and modern sources alike combining seeming contradictions; she is equally inspired by Fayum mummy portraits and John McCracken. Throughout her two-decade practice, she has treated painting with an On Kawara like investigative intensity and devotion. She is asking questions, not giving answers.

The work comes about in a hyper-focused wordless state in a balance of planned process and spontaneity. Marie Birkedal thins her paints to the point where the binder breaks and only the pigment remains, which makes the paint so liquid it gives the painting a degree of autonomy. The paint develops through evaporation leaving dust-like traces, making the paintings seem evoked rather than made. The luminous washes and powerful brushstrokes radiate an ephemeral presence and the paintings appear to be breathing beings.

Marie Birkedal’s works encapsulate time as a material equally to paint and canvas. The works are not alla prima; the translucent tactile thinned color requires that each layer is completely dry until the next. There are long periods of emptiness where seemingly nothing happens but everything happens. Just as she does not view negative space as a non-space in her works, she does not view waiting as non-time.

To Marie Birkedal the tactile haptic experience is an equally valid way of understanding and being in the world as words and language, she believes that there is a code of communication and understanding that is visual and outside language.


MARIE IRMGARD BIRKEDAL

b* 1976, Denmark

Education

2010 MFA Funen Art Academy
2008 - 2010 The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts 
2004 - 2008 Funen Art Academy
2003 - 2004 Art History, University of Copenhagen
2002 - 2003 Classical Drawing and sculpting, Tegneskolen Ryesgade
1998 - 2002 Bachelor English literature, University of Roskilde

Selected exhibitions

Tilbageblik, Janus Vestjyllands Kunstmuseum, 2023
Stranger Things, Runde Ecke, Dresden, 2023
Variations in Surface Type, Anne Aarsland, Copenhagen, 2023
8 x 12, FLOOR_, 65-6 Yeonhui-ro 15-gil, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul, Korea, 2022
72nd A-ONE, Silvermine Galleries, Connecticut, USA, 2022
New Balance, Glue by DAG, Berlin 2021
Hard Earned Innocence, Lyngby Kunstforening, Denmark 2020
Alternative (f) Acts, Galerie Laura Mars, Berlin 2019
Romantic Troopers, Lage Egal, Berlin 2018
Come from Painting, Galerie 1214, Berlin, 2018
Interiors + Territories, Galerie 1214, Berlin, 2018
Savage Glitter, Galerie 1214, Berlin, 2018
Nordisk Salon 2014, Dunkers Kulturhus, Helsingborg, Sweden, 2014
De dødes dag – Día de los Muertos, Damp gallery, Copenhagen 2011
3rd Party, Beaver Projects, Copenhagen 2011
Blow Up, Lyngby Kunstforening, Lyngby 2010
IIIII III at 8, Rom8, Bergen, Norway 2010
New Mexico 17 years after, L.E.L presents, Copenhagen 2010
Anstrøg – Unge Kunstnere på Spring, Gallery Christina Wilson, Copenhagen 2010
On Paper, Stalke Gallery, Kirke Sonnerup 2010(J)
Everywhere, Nowhere, Somewhere, Power House Memphis, Memphis 2009
Vitavrap, DASK Gallery, Copenhagen 2009
Artist Easter Exhibition KP, AArhus 2008
Baby Suggs’ Rag Rug, Funen Art Museum, Odense 2008
Eine Feministische Intervention,  Galerie Asterisk *, (retrospect 2007)
Ornament as a Crime, Koh-I-Noor, Copenhagen 2007
The Artists Spring Exhibition, Charlottenborg, Copenhagen 2007
The Artists Fall Exhibition KE, Den Frie, Copenhagen 2007
The Artists Fall Exhibition KE, Den Frie, Copenhagen 2006
Postfucked, Brandts Passage, Odense 2006
Feminism Now?!, Trondheim, Norway 2006
VK Exhibition, West Zealand 2004
First Prize Winner VK Exhibition, West Zealand 2003

Publications
Tropismen, Dr. phil. Peter Kohlhaas, Stiftung Kunstfonds, Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien, Galerie1214, Bad Dürrheim, 2021
HEJ curatorial, The Copenhagen Letters, Sunday Sessions, Artbook @ MoMA PS1, NY, 2012
Crise, Je t’aime, Park #03, Portugal, 2011
Stalke, On Paper, Stalke Galleri, 2010
Vitavrap, Copenhagen 2009

Memberships BBK and  BKF

PDF



  1. My work is extraordinarily physical
  2. My work is extraordinarily transcendental
  3. There is no irony whatsoever within my work
  4. Disclaimer: 100 % sincerity is impossible within good art
  5. I base my work on broken glass and kindness
  6. I dive for pearls
  7. Effortlessness takes backbreaking work
  8. Pure formalism is a myth
  9. Bruce Lee is important for painters
  10. If one thing matters, everything matters
  11. Empathy is a super-power
  12. Glitter and trickery should not be mistaken
  13. I accept contradiction
  14. I think about John McCracken
  15. I think about Ana Mendieta
  16. I think about Sam Gilliam
  17. I think about Robert Irving
  18. Mostly I think about Peter Bradley
  19. A decade in Germany changes you
  20. I know who Vinzenz Brinkmann is
  21. Descartes was mean to dogs
  22. Material and intellect should not be separated
  23. Charles Bukowski is easier read than lived
  24. Non-read isolation is a painful price
  25. J’veux pas finir comme Camilie Claudel
  26. Language exists but is mostly inadequate
  27. Sol LeWitt was almost right
  28. Good artists are latter-day shamans
  29. I believe in the Beholders Share
  30. I believe it takes one to know one
  31. I never saw San Severo
  32. I once saw Colorado
  33. I miss the smell of Sagebrush
  34. I apologize for disappearing, I had things to take care of
  35. I still don’t distinguish between culture and nature
  36. I still think about Lenny Bruce
  37. I still think about Thoreau
  38. My favorite word is still “Godspeed

Link to 2010s list