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”.
MB´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. 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.
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.
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”.
CV
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 II, Kunstbygningen Vraa, 2024
Papir, Orange Contemporary, Elsinore, 2024
Twenty Years of Glue, Glue by Dag, Berlin, 2024
Unterm lederhimmel, Alte Feuerwache, Projektraum, Berlin, 2024
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