LARS NØRGÅRD BAD NERVES CHRISTIAN EJLERS FORLAG

Transkript

1 LARS NØRGÅRD BAD NERVES CHRISTIAN EJLERS FORLAG

2 L A R S N Ø R G Å R D B A D N E R V E S

3 A SOLITARY AND ENERGETIC APPROACH BY LISBETH BONDE There cannot be any doubt about Lars Nørgård s status as one of Denmark s most important renewers of the craft of painting in the late-modern era. When we turn our attention to his surreal and whimsical drawings, we find ourselves standing before works that are almost ingenious. From where do these absurd ideas come? What does this mind look like, we might ask this mind that generates dullard sailors, chickens with shark fins, wandering globes and Christmas trees fashioned by fish skeletons? Already, back in the 1980s, art-scene aficionados had ample opportunity to witness Nørgård s art but it was first in the 1990s that a much wider public met his work, especially when he unveiled a series of posters made for DSB [Danish National Railways] with those signature strokes, so characteristic of his work, that capture his untamed ideas in their flights of fancy. With his loony and enigmatic humor, he jazzed up the train traffic, so to speak, at every station stop in Denmark. But let s wind back in time to the starting point and then gradually work our way toward the present time, so that readers who might be new to this artist s work can follow along: Lars Nørgård (born in 1956) turned up on the Danish art scene in the beginning of the 1980s at the time that he broke away from a course of study in San Francisco, where he was being trained as a painter. Instead of working all the way toward a Masters degree, as per his intention, he was satisfied with the Bachelor degree that he earned at the Academy of Art College. On a visit to his home country in 1981 he made the decision to stay, a determination that was influenced by an encounter with some colleagues of his generation who were busy working at the renowned Værkstedet Værst, an artistic nesting box located on Rosenørns Allé in Copenhagen, which Lars Nørgård found to be a particularly fertile experimental milieu, offering its participating members a whole spectrum of challenges. During this phase, Nørgård presented himself as a veritable painter s painter. Standing amidst this large heterogeneous array of artists who, in the day s cultural media channels, were being presented under the collective nomenclature De unge vilde [The Young Wild Ones], Nørgård distinguished himself as a decidedly more classical figurative painter with his very own genuine motific world typically served up with a tonguein-cheek approach and a surplus of black humor. In contrast to many people of his generation who attended the Royal Danish Academy of Art in the 1980s, Lars Nørgård never operated with a theoretical meta-plan. He is indeed a reflective and knowledgeable artist, an intellectual and thoughtful soul, but he is not an academic nerd whose art comes forth against a backdrop of erudite interpretations and theoretical formulations. His art is nurtured, instead, by imagination and intuition. Originally, he started working as a photo-realist, but the time he spent in San Francisco turned him on to the patently American rendition of abstract expressionism. However, as has already been mentioned, he changed tack when he returned to Denmark and became a special kind of seer and commentator; this can clearly be spotted in the well known generation portraits of his artist colleagues who happened to be working alongside him at Værkstedet Værst. These humorous and allegorical generation portraits served to document the life going on in the artists colony, for better or worse in a way that can be compared with the somewhat older German artist Jörg Immendorff s caricatured culture-critical generation portraits, as seen in Immendorff s series, Café Deutschland, which has firmly inscribed itself into the history of German art. In this so-called curled period not unlike a similar phase in Vilhelm Lundstrøm s career Nørgård demonstrated his sublime capacity to condense people s physiognomic and physical features in a rapid and telling manner. What also comes to mind here are associations with Honoré Daumier, the Michelangelo of caricatureportraiture, especially when you look for example at Nørgård s portrait of art collector and curator John Hunov and his wife, Birte Inge Christensen, posing in Adam and Eve costumes or of his artist colleagues Dorte Dahlin and Berit Jensen, exposed as half-naked music-hall ladies. In the spirit of the so-called bad paintings, where the objective was to paint as hideously as possible, with a deliberately grimacing attitude, Nørgård makes use of a greenish-brown earthcolor palette in this early phase of his work. 4 5

4 Later on, the freewheeling, daffy and surreal fantasies came to the fore. To the great surprise of many of his admirers, these tall tales virtually invaded Nørgård s paintings, which were supplemented by a whole slew of absurd drawings. The situation in this next very fertile and productive phase that lasted about ten years was this: the drawings nurtured the paintings, as source material, and vice versa. It is simply astonishing to witness the interminable wellspring of imagination that characterized Nørgård s works during these prolific years. However, sometime around Nørgård stopped making these absurd and figurative rebuslike paintings, where he was also engaged in making subtle word-plays on the relationship between the painting s plot and its title, by means of which new associations and trails of meaning emerged. This is a capacity of which he is still a master. The fact is that he had played through the register and had now come to feel like some kind of assistant or helper for his increasingly demanding sense of fantasy. By this time, he felt somehow that the painting had degenerated to the level of pure illustration and he found himself looking for new excitement and new surprises. Accordingly, he started to paint pictures that he did not know beforehand: paintings that operated in the manner of a research process and which provided room for experimentation. Now a new phase was ushered in, a phase characterized by hyper-energetic and colorful semi-figurative paintings which are plentifully displayed in the present volume, which focuses on works made in the past four years. In this phase, Nørgård has refined his method and honed his instruments with the result that he is even more able to control the very difficult also in the technical sense creative process. In these kaleidoscopic paintings, Nørgård nullifies the central perspective. Instead, forms, lines and ribbons of color are flung out on the picture surface with a centrifugal force. The colors are almost glaring and they appear to clash with each other, especially because Nørgård makes extravagant use of complementary contrasts and cold/warm contrasts. Here, we are far away from prim or beautiful paintings. What we have before us is rather a matter of colorful and high voltage works of art. These power discharges are on the verge of capsizing but are rescued at the goal line by Nørgård s compositional and colorist surefire accuracy. The new paintings are alluring for the viewer and also for the painter himself. Here, Lars Nørgård proceeds stepby-step, moving all the way out to the edge while officiating at a wrestling match between his boundless sense of fantasy and his proficiency as a pictorial artist. All the while, the canvas lays down a gauntlet before the artist to adopt new points of view and to put new methods into use. The experiment continues from one painting to the next, in the manner of an extended chain reaction. On a hot summer day, we meet the artist in his large studio, situated in a factory building in the Nørrebro section in Copenhagen: an impressive and high-ceilinged room with two stories and an overlooking mezzanine on the second floor which allows the artist to stand back from his paintings and contemplate them from above. The space offers Nørgård the possibility of working in large formats, so that he can satisfactorily fulfill the many public-adornment projects that continuously come his way in the form of commissioned assignments. Lars Nørgård has just finished a number of new paintings and just laid the finishing touches on a suite of drawings for exhibitions that will be held in the autumn of What we have here is a long queue of happy accidents that follow one another in sequence. It s something like throwing a bucket of paint against the wall. Either it comes to be beautiful or else it turns out ugly. It s all a question of luck, he says about his explosive and brilliantly colored paintings. You ve been putting a great many colors into play in your large paintings. What role does color play for you? I am using the color so that it will create both harmony and discord. What I m aiming at is a situation where a whole lot of energy will come forth the picture should almost transmit electrical discharges. For this purpose, I switch back and forth between cold and warm colors. When you see this red section over here [Lars Nørgård points out a certain area of one very large painting with a primarily vertically extended format], I have been using three different red hues, both warm and cold ones, that keep the painting in motion. Moreover, I m working with a variation in the texturalities on the whole, I am very concerned about creating variation of the surface. Sometimes I take on the role of the little chemist inside me [laughs]. I ve got to know how much the 6 7

5 color has to dry out before I go about applying a thin layer on top of a thicker one. I do all the wrong things, all that stuff that you re not supposed to do when you re painting, in order to elicit certain effects that I think are exciting. I ve got to be attuned to when the very minute arrives where it s high time to strike. For this reason, working with these paintings is an enormously intense process. There s no room for anything else while they re standing there and I can t just go on home in the middle of the whole process. There is a whole world of texturalities and surface effects that can be seen when you move closely up to the canvases. The eye is really given something to feed on. That s exactly what I m aiming at, says Nørgård, with a glint in his eye. How do you go about getting started with making such a huge painting? You are also operating with crackles that can cause the mind to recall a swatch of geological material, like eroding crusts of earth. These parts of the paintings are strange and mysterious but they are also very beautiful. How do you make them? These have been produced by using water-based oil paints that I allow to dry. While the paint is drying, I pour a thin layer of color around the half-dry color and then I let it lie there at certain places while letting it fall away at other spots. Because of this, the crackles arise. What we have here is a long queue of happy accidents that follow one another in sequence. It s something like throwing a bucket of paint against the wall. Either it comes to be beautiful or else it turns out ugly. It s all a question of luck. Do you sometimes paint on top of a section you ve created when it doesn t work on the first attempt? Of course, it happens sometimes. But while some of my paintings have basically formed their own emergence from the outset, I ve really had to grind tooth and nail to get others to succeed. Here [Lars Nørgård points to an area of the painting with scratches made in the paint], for example, I was using old stiff brushes that were left with color on the bristles so that I could make special trails in the paint. Sometimes I am deliberately using materials that do not form chemical bonds. What this requires is that the whole thing has to be covered with lacquer or else the pigment just peels away from the canvas. Over here, I ve been using Chinese ink, applied on top of the oil paint, says Lars Nørgård and points at a large section of one of the paintings. Earlier on, when I was still working from a pre-existing idea, I started by drawing a motif. But in my new paintings, I am hurling the colors on the canvas and the brush is only sparingly employed. The black contour lines you see on the finished paintings do not enter the picture until the very last phase. Up to that moment, I am busy creating a skeleton or a ruin for building further on. I cannot just set color fields in upon a white canvas and I don t have the slightest idea where the picture is going to wind up when I get started with the work. Each and every colored field has its own personality it s a micro-cosmos. Sometimes it s necessary to put in some mosaic-like elements in order to prevent the picture from acquiring a fixed point or a center. The picture has to be constantly wrenched away from making sense. Every time you think that you ve now managed to gain a sense of a certain meaning about or hit upon an interpretation of the picture, this same sense should then disappear for the sake of a new meaning. In the manner of puzzle pictures? Yes, exactly! And when I m working with square-shaped pictures and this is often the case I am always trying to remove the center from the middle of the canvas. But what is it that these paintings are dealing with, in the fundamental sense? Speaking for myself, I read them as being metaphors for chaos and order. They appear to contain equal measures of both of these. What do you have to say about this? Well, I also think that they reflect my whole life, which is constituted by equal measures of chaos and order [laughs]. The paintings have come to take on colossal significance 8 9

6 when it comes to my own sense of well-being I m not a particularly nice fellow to be around when I haven t been painting for a while. But this is not tantamount to saying that the act of painting is therapy for me. Nonetheless, it does happen to be an existentially important domain for me. My painting is a perfect drug and it s very hard to take a vacation from it. For me, painting is the only medium that offers access to these experiences of infinitude which perpetually permit new aspects to turn up. All the while, the picture is changing its appearance and it constantly provides me with new experiences. When I look at this picture [Lars Nørgård points toward one of the larger paintings in the studio], I suddenly come to discover something I ve never seen before in spite of the fact that I painted it myself. In contrast to sculpture, film or music, realms of expression that can also contain these experiences of infinitude, painting does not require being transacted by a large number of participants. One person, all alone, can create this entire progression of infinitude and should it come to pass that I m not happy with what I ve made, I can simply tear it into pieces or paint over the whole thing and start all over again. And although you cannot actually see the drawings here, they are indeed present. There is a moment of non-resolution, of riddle, just like there is in the drawings. I ought to mention, however, the reason that I moved away from using the comical drawings which I had been painting onto the canvases for a good many years: I didn t feel that projecting a visual joke from an A4 arc of paper up to the monumental formats, which many of my paintings have today, was working for me anymore. Lars Nørgård makes drawings, especially when he takes up residence at The Blue Lagoon on Iceland or in Israel, two places that he regularly visits largely for purposes of finding relief for his chronic condition of psoriasis. He still gets his drawing paper sent over from the United States he prefers the American B-format, which he became comfortable with during the days of his study in San Francisco. He makes his drawings at a furious pace and the drawings emerge in groups; he produces as many as 25 in one day. From the moment he opens his eyes in the morning he can tell whether or not this day is going to be a good one for making drawings. What is required is that the slate has been wiped clear and clean. He is especially prolific with making drawings when, every now and then, he is not bound up by everyday life s many obligations. Nørgård customarily creates about 150 drawings when he stays in a certain spot for a month s time. Since the 1990s, he has created so many drawings that they could fill up the walls of a large museum, from floor to ceiling. In his most recent exhibition held in one of the Statens Museum for Kunst s Focus Rooms, 202 drawings were placed on view. Elements of the drawings enter into his pictures: body stripes and spinning tops frequently occurring figures can be identified in both mediums. What we have here is a fluctuation between effects and elements from the drawings that are being integrated into the painting. Do you look back with nostalgia on the years of fun and hard work at Værkstedet Værst? Yes, of course I do. But then again, it s classic to look back on one s youth with a sense of nostalgia. On the one side, we were marginalized and rebellious we were punks - and on the other side, we were being asked to be very disciplined and compliant, like when John Hunov was in sight and wanted to buy a painting [laughs]. No, the sense of idealism didn t persevere, not even in the short run. You just waltzed right on down to Café Dan Turéll so that you could brag about what you had just managed to sell. Today, we re living very spread out from each other and we only see each other at festive occasions like birthdays, weddings and baptisms. So, with this in mind, it really is a lot of fun when we do meet. But we never talk anymore about art or money. But I m having a very hard time handling the passage of time. Watching the years go by is, quite simply, terrible. I often make drawings of clocks and I consider life to be one long tape measure. I take hold of a scissors and clip off a little piece for New Year s. It might sound like I m torturing myself, I know, but it s necessary for me to do this. The aspect of time is actually intrinsic to the very process of painting. Sure it is, and I imagine that your complicated paintings must demand a great deal of time? Yes, they do and making them is actually very hard for me. A rather complicated painting calls for a rather elaborate 10 11

7 and time-consuming process. If I wanted to make neat and constructive paintings that were easy to grasp and right in keeping with the tenor of the times, I guess I could do so. But this just wouldn t work for me. I m always making it difficult for myself and for the viewer to penetrate his or her way into the picture. It s supposed to be hard to handle. And as soon as I know my own form and my own technique, I lose interest. It s difficult to contain all these forms in my head. There s got to be a deeper meaning with the pictures since, as an artist, you are spending your whole life on them. In contrast to an artist like Per Kirkeby, who conjoins his paintings with nature, my paintings are based on processes inside me. I cannot communicate my message with words. In contrast to Claus Carstensen and Peter Bonde, who were preaching back in the 1980s that the individual artwork does not have any autonomous meaning, I sincerely believe that it does. You should be able to pick out one particular picture and it also ought to have a valid meaning in 25 years time. In that sense, couldn t we say that you are a classic artist, who takes the art institution and the conception of the art work seriously? Certainly and very much so! In his recent works, Lars Nørgård is moving along two main tracks: elements of figuration crop up here and there, even as he is constantly breaking up the picture so that it becomes estranged and abstract. The painting s many displacements of planes, the centrifugal force, the elements that clash and give rise to sparks among themselves when they collide on the surface all of this supplies a great deal of energy. There are both depth and surface, both dynamics and lull and both cold and warm areas in the picture that amass themselves into a complex but visually stimulating and entertaining totality. In this most recent phase, Lars Nørgård has turned back to the abstract expressionism of his youth, which he inflects in his own direction. It is still the American abstract expressionism that serves as the source of inspiration Pollock, de Kooning, Rauschenberg and Lichtenstein and last but not least, another painter whose name is coming more and more to be held in high esteem, Philip Guston, who rummages about as a kind of sounding board for what Nørgård really wants to say. On Danish soil, Nørgård is an energetic lone wolf whose paintings are also nurtured by rock and jazz music from the 1960s and 1970s, and especially Captain Beefheart s compositions, which can be characterized as a most peculiar concoction and by their surreal and enigmatic lyrics. Beefheart s is a music that wrenches about, sneers and turns things around much in the manner of Nørgård s paintings. The famous rock composer and musician also happens to be a painter and he has become a part of Michael Werner s gallery, where his works are presented using his given name, Don van Vliet. To a great extent, music serves as an inspiration for Lars Nørgård. He often paints while listening to extended improvisations by musicians as diverse as Miles Davis, Pat Metheny, The Grateful Dead and early records by Pink Floyd; these are sounds that he has been listening to for quite some time. On the whole, you really have to get with it and keep your eye on the ball if you want to experience Nørgård s works which, in recent years, have also been supplemented by a number of bronze sculptures and, in the case of his latest exhibitions, by porcelain sculptures with motives inspired by his figurative nonsense figures that also appear in the drawings, like the chicken with shark fins. Above and beyond this, there is his flair for providing his paintings with absurd and humorous titles, which steer the viewer s attention in a determined direction. One reads the title right into the picture and tries to make sense out of the painted chaos, even if the interpreter will often have to throw in the towel. Lars Nørgård is always on the move and it can be difficult to leave the studio because there are so many things packed in there. Every now and then, the artist simply has to go down to the corner and grab a beer in order to ease his way out from the painting process before going home to his family. The best day for working is Sunday: that s the day of the week that he can work, unfettered, for many hours on end. For him, what is extremely important is to be able to make use of organic and environmentally-friendly nontoxic colors. He will go to any lengths to avoid polluting the environment. To a question put before him about when his paintings are finished and ready, he retorts: When you can feel it in your belly. It s something like a process of emission. It might sound deeply pathetic, but the picture actually says to me, Hey you, now you ve just got to let me be and now you can get lost and go home happy, says Lars Nørgård with a broad grin. I hurry to take my leave, so that I can leave him alone to get started on his next painting

8 P A I N T I N G S, D R AW I N G S A N D S C U L P T U R E S

9 Yes, I Do Not Interrupt, cm, acrylic and oil on canvas, Trapholt 16 17

10 Coxcomb, cm, oil on canvas, 2006 Larks Tongues, cm, oil on canvas, ARoS Ω 18 19

11 Nest, cm, oil on canvas, Fænø

12 Rain and Sleep no. 1, ink on paper, cm,

13 I ll Call You on Wednesday, cm, oil on canvas, HK 24 25

14 Onion Jack, cm, oil on canvas, 2006 In a Nutshell, cm, oil on canvas, 2007 Ω 26 27

15 Rain and Sleep no. 2, ink on paper, cm,

16 Velouria, cm, oil on canvas, Horsens Kunstmuseum 30 31

17 Sitting Bull, cm, oil on canvas,

18 34 35 Rain and Sleep no. 3, ink on paper, cm, 2007

19 Tapehead, cm, oil on canvas, Statens Museum for Kunst The Happy Bitch, cm, oil on canvas, 2007 Ω 36 37

20 Park, cm, oil on canvas, 2006 Conversation over the Fence, cm, oil on canvas, 2007 Ω 38 39

21 Envy Comes Home, cm, acrylic and oil on canvas, 2006 Former Lion Tamer, cm, oil on canvas, 2005 Ω 40 41

22 Wheel of Fortune, cm, raw form in clay,

23 Thin Walls 4, cm, acrylic on canvas Ny Carlsberg Fondet Little, cm, oil on canvas, 2006 Ω 44 45

24 1000 Ties, cm, acrylic, varnish and oil on canvas, 2007 Voyeur behind the Wheel, cm, acrylic on canvas Horsens Kunstmuseum 46 47

25 Rain and Sleep no. 4, ink on paper, cm, 2007

26 Quiet Sun, cm, oil on canvas,

27 Receiver, cm, oil on canvas, 2007 Krakær Boys Choir, cm, acrylic and oil on canvas,

28 Greedy Ex-Girlfriends, cm, acrylic and oil on canvas, 2001 Sleepy Headed Berries, cm, oil on canvas,

29 Rain and Sleep no. 5, ink on paper, cm,

30 Rain and Sleep no. 6, ink on paper, cm, 2007

31 Milky Drops, cm, acrylic and oil on canvas, 2007 Inside the Doorman, cm, oil on canvas, 2007 Ω 60 61

32 Poppy Night, cm, oil on canvas,

33 Green Terror, cm, oil on canvas,

34 Step Right Up!, cm, oil on canvas, 2007 Thin Walls 3, cm, acrylic on canvas Ny Carlsberg Fondet 66 67

35 Wax, cm, acrylic, varnish and oil on canvas, The Opera

36 Summer Drunk, cm, oil on canvas, 2005 Secretly Excited, cm, oil on canvas, 2007 Ω 70 71

37 Rain and Sleep no. 7, ink on paper, cm,

38 Gasoline, cm, acrylic and oil on canvas, 2006 A Helping Hand, cm, acrylic and oil on canvas, Ny Carlsberg Fondet 74 75

39 Beauty Sleep, cm, acrylic and oil on canvas, 2000 Banana Moon, cm, oil on canvas,

40 May I Have a Spoon?, cm, The Opera 78 79

41 Thin Walls 2, cm, acrylic on canvas Ny Carlsberg Fondet The Last Guest, cm, oil on canvas,

42 A Complicated Mind, cm, acrylic and oil on canvas, 2006 Thin Walls 1, cm, acrylic on canvas, Ny Carlsberg Fondet 82 83

43 Rain and Sleep no. 8, ink on paper, cm,

44 86 87 Rain and Sleep no.9, ink on paper, cm, 2007

45 Grindavik Olympics, cm, oil on canvas, 2007 Magic Mole, cm, oil on canvas,

46 Lovers Tree, cm, oil on canvas, 2006 Milkhouse, cm, oil on canvas, 2006 Ω 90 91

47 Woman, Moon and Weeping Onion, cm, acrylic and oil on canvas, 2003 Snow Scissors, cm, oil on canvas, 2006 Ω 92 93

48 Dull Weather Smiles 4, cm, oil on canvas, 1998 Flyswatter Dreams, cm, acrylic on canvas,

49 Rain and Sleep no. 10, ink on paper, cm,

50 Smoke Signal, cm, oil on canvas, 2007 µ Ventilator, cm, oil on canvas,

51 Toastman, cm, oil on canvas, 2006 The Sad Student, cm, oil on canvas,

52 Rain and Sleep no. 11, ink on paper, cm,

53 Swearing Box, cm, acrylic and oil on canvas,

54 Sparrow Heart, cm, oil on canvas, 2005 Girls and Trees, cm, oil on canvas,

55 Careful Invitation, cm, oil on canvas, 2006 Smack, the Little Wretches, Smack, Smack, cm, acrylic on canvas. State Art Foundation

56 Poetry with Problems, cm, acrylic and oil on canvas, 2000 Eggs and Their Shells, cm, oil on canvas, 2006 Ω

57 Rain and Sleep no. 12, ink on paper, cm, 2007

58 God s Gift of Monkeys, cm, acrylic and oil on canvas, 2001 Haystack in Retrospect, cm, acrylic and oil on canvas, 2003 Ω

59 Spinner, cm, acrylic, varnish and oil on canvas, The Opera A Bite of the Cake, cm, acrylic and oil on canvas, 2004 Ω

60 The Orange Tastes Like Dice, cm, oil on canvas, 2006 Your Table, My Picture, cm, acrylic and oil on canvas,

61 Rain and Sleep no. 13, ink on paper, cm,

62 Seatrain, cm, oil on canvas,

63 A Cork on the Ocean, cm, oil on canvas,

64 Jellyfish Kiss, cm, oil on canvas,

65 Rain and Sleep no. 14, ink on paper, cm,

66 Rain and Sleep no. 15, ink on paper, cm,

67 Spy Bikini, cm, oil on canvas,

68 Rain and Sleep no. 16, ink on paper, cm,

69 B I O G R A F I

70 1956 Born on October 25 in Aalborg Skolen for Brugskunst, Copenhagen Academy of Art College, San Francisco, United States SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 1978 Still-life, Stald 15, Aalborg 1984 Can a woman be happy with a new-wave haircut, Galleri Specta, Århus 1985 Forordsrullerne, Eks-Skolens Forlag, København Maleri, Galleri Baselisk, København 1986 Fruen ringer ikke, det må man selv gøre, Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Århus 1987 Circe, Galleri Prag, Hellerup Arch Support, Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Århus 1988 Blinde ører, Galleri Prag, Hellerup Vamos a ver, London Bar, Barcelona, Spanien Krimskrams, Galleri Specta, Århus Årets Kunstner, Jyllands-Posten, København 1989 Arch Support-malerierne, Galleri Brandt, Fredensborg Kikeriki, Galleri Prag, Hellerup 1990 Maleri og tegning, Galleri Arcticus, London, England Decoi, Galleri Prag, Hellerup 1991 Flåt(d)ens nyhed(t)er, Vestsjællands Kunstmuseum, Sorø Hysteria, Franz Pedersens Kunsthandel, Horsens 1992 Salthorse, ARCO, Madrid, Spanien og Galerie Mikael Andersen, København Lars Nørgård, Det Danske Hus, Paris, Frankrig og Galerie AMC, Mulhouse, Frankrig 1993 Lars Nørgård, Nordisk Ministerråd, København Nærbillede af et geni, Hostrup-Pedersen & Johansen, København 1994 Picnic anywhere!, Det Danske Kulturinstitut, Edinburgh, Skotland og Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Skotland 1996 Et tandsæt af forlorne pensler, Galerie Asbæk, København 1998 Smil i gråvejr, Galerie Asbæk, København Pølser og drab, Skive Kunstmuseum, Skive 1999 Little Man With A Big Hat, DCA Gallery, New York, NY, USA 2000 Grundstødt forskning, Galerie MøllerWitt, Århus Voyeur bag rattet, Horsens Kunstmuseum, Horsens