JENS FÄNGE: PARLOUR

Perrotin Tokyo is pleased to present Parlour, an exhibition by Jens Fänge that invites us into a world of echoes and fragments.

November 20 – December 28, 2024

The term parlour itself reaches back to the Middle Ages, when in monasteries silence was absolute, save for the parlour, the sole room where conversation could resume. Here, Fänge’s parlour becomes a private, domestic theater where people, animals, and ordinary objects appear like half-remembered scenes, familiar yet spliced and rearranged, as if he has reanimated an interior world from elsewhere, conjuring it through a kind of painterly alchemy.

Since each painting consists of several parts, Fänge can’t hang them on the wall initially; instead, he places them directly on the floor. He has to watch his step when walking between panels and details scattered all over the studio floor. Fänge sometimes climb a ladder to get some distance and a proper view of the objects. Usually, he’s working on several pieces simultaneously. That allows him to play around; for example, he’s currently moving around a small portrait painted on a wooden panel between several paintings before he will settle on a final composition. Using this method, the paintings get acquainted with each other and form kinship, a wholeness.

The choice of material is also of great importance. To give the work tension and contrast, a glossy varnished piece, for instance, can meet a matte surface of dyed linen. It’s a bit like playing with a dollhouse and turning it into a theater where his role as the artist is shifting between being the director, the actor, the stage designer, and the audience.

He wanted an architectural term. Parlour—meaning living room—suggests a domestic, everyday environment. Rooms often play an important role in his paintings. It’s the scene where the drama unfolds. He likes to think of the walls, floors, and ceilings as something that defines and limits us, capturing and putting a frame around the protagonists. The room becomes the prerequisite for letting his painted figures take place in the world.

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