In his exhibition Second Skin for Gammelgaard, Mikkel Carl exhibits a series of works created over the past five years. Some are reinterpretations in direct dialogue with the specific exhibition spaces, while others are new and made especially for the occasion. In respective ways, they all deal with the fact that things often are not what they appear to be. Each work surprisingly presents itself as if with a ’second skin.

 

This is particularly evident in the installation Second Skin, which has given the exhibition its title. Hundreds of processed pieces of bark from a felled chestnut tree at Gammelgaard are scattered across the floor, resembling casts of the very same pieces of bark.

 

In this work, and more generally, Carl questions how we read reality through surface appearances and based on this among other things judge something as purely natural, while other things are ’only’ recognized for having a certain resemblance to nature.

 

Quite unconventionally, on the part of the artist, we also find a particular interplay between the work and its exhibition signs, compelling us to contemplate further the cultural codes underlying what we perceive as our immediate sensory experience of the world. As an extension of this, the title Second Skin is also a play on the concept of ’second nature’, implying that something cultural is so thoroughly learned that it is perceived as entirely natural.

 

Mikkel Carl is generally occupied with how language, spatial conditions, and the apparent qualities of materials affect the way we decode our surroundings. Over the past decade, this interest has predominantly manifested itself in sculptural works or wall-based pieces. The latter essentially paintings executed on various materials e.g. mirror foil manifesting a constant tension between space and surface.

 

As a recurring characteristic, many of Carl’s works draw on minimalist art and its preference for industrial materials, which are meant to be experienced in themselves, without reference to anything external. However, nothing in Mikkel Carl’s works is what it seems to be. He employs striking material manipulations that are both seductive and disconcerting. Moreover, he creates site-specific dialogues, where the installations mischievously challenge the physical and institutional framework in which the works are displayed.

 

At Gammelgaard, we encounter several sculptures that obstruct our usual passage through the art galleries. For instance, the installation I Am Inside You Are Inside Me consisting of three freestanding, open metal cubes that tests our spatial perception and arouses curiosity in relation to our own presence and that of others. Or even more strikingly, elements which appear to be made of reinforced concrete and block the entrance forcing us to walk through the cafe to enter the actual galleries. In here, once again we will experience that our expectations of the material quality of Carl’s works are punctured. A series of coloristic works on metal plates are not, as they appear, the result of an abstract-expressive painterly process but have arisen out of a carefully controlled chemical-electrical reaction via a single current-carrying cable.

 

The uncertainty regarding weight, depth, and texture of the works shifts our expectations of what we perceive as ’the art itself.’ This actually also applies to the exhibition spaces, which as a setting do not immediately provide the answers they often do. In other words, with Second Skin Mikkel Carl pays tribute to bluffing as a strategy, but with the hope of fostering a new self-awareness in all of us—a reflection on how we and others, in the interplay between language, space, and materiality comprehend the world.

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Pernille Fonnesbech

Director of Gammelgaard