Søren Martinsen

In New Landscapes, Martinsen broadens the horizons of landscape paintings, so to speak, by transforming photos taken from Google Earth.

Photos of fields from above are painted over with striking and eye-catching colours, changing the original image to an almost abstract but realistic feel. The result of changing the geographic photos to simple geometric shapes can be associated with the work of Piet Mondrian or Poul Gernes’ ”Target” works from 1966.

In New Landscapes, Martinsen reinvents the classic landscape painting and asks, how our fast-paced, digital lives have changed the way we experience time and the world around us according to it. While painters used to go out in nature to replicate their impressions of it, Martinsen does the same, but with digital landscapes. In doing so, he demonstrates the fact that the screen in which we rely on clouds our judgement of both space and time, by transforming the digital landscape into a picturesque, creative and softer image.

In a work containing 21 smaller prints, Martinsen shows how our highly technological society can be affected by nature through his distinct and poetic renditions of fields that have flourished after fertilisation- and sprinklers in Kansas.
Martinsen’s impressive paintings show nature’s overpopulated conditions due to the upper hand of man. Through his semi-abstract technique, he draws attention to the ultimate differences and similarities between man and nature.

Søren Martinsen (1966) graduated from the Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 1995 and from Goldsmiths’ College in London, where he did his Masters. Martinsen is involved in other larger exhibitions, both at home in Denmark and overseas e.g. The National Gallery in Copenhagen, The Royal Collection of Graphic Art, ARoS, The Kastrupgård Collection, Uppsala Museum of Art and Malmö Museum of Art.