Morten Skrøder Lund, Untitled (2016), via Art Observed
LTD Gallery is presenting the first U.S. Exhibition of painter Morten Skrøder Lund’s paintings on Polyethylene Vinyl Acetate (PEVA), dwelling on notions of time, composition and the interaction of paint and ground.
The work in Lund’s exhibition is heavy on interplay and the alchemical, toying with various combinations of paints, finishes and various physical interjections with the canvas that underscore his interest not in the act of painting so much as that explicitly engaged with the hand and it’s expression of movement, but of a more expansive perspective on both the body and the paint in engagement with the surface. Holes are scorched in some of his pieces, while in others, abrasive caustics were allowed to sit on the surface, turning the artist’s figurative pieces into slippery pools of color and chemical traces. In one work on view, a layer of paint has been violently scraped from the PEVA, twisting back over the top layer of paint to be attached lower in the canvas, leaving a loop of paint drifting over the work.
Morten Skrøder Lund, Untitled (2016), via Art Observed
These exercises are offered an additional fluidity by the PEVA used as a base in each work.  Paint seems to struggle to cling to the surface, or sits atop the surface in a strangely luminescent glow, as if the various reflective capacities of each layer of paint or material was glowing at a different hue. In addition, the paint seems to slide quite readily from the canvas, or pools messily when encountering any solvent or other chemical. The result is a striking exercise in permanence, as if Lund was aiming for a visualization of the work’s attempt to remain on the surface it had been applied.
Morten Skrøder Lund, Untitled (2016), via Art Observed
This sense of movement, or perhaps of a sudden vector of escape from the work, is what makes the artist’s show at LTD particularly notable. Affording each piece a certain degree of resistance to the painterly process, Lund’s final product pushes a tense relation between ground and subject, one that the viewer often finds themselves in the midst of.
The exhibition is on view through March 3rd.
Morten Skrøder Lund, Untitled (2016), via Art Observed
Morten Skrøder Lund, Untitled (2016), via Art Observed
— D. Creahan
Read more:
LTD Gallery [Exhibition Site]
