Anders Scrmn Meisner: Picked an Orange for a Renaissance Girl

 

A woman lying within a giant oyster shell within a blue garden. A ring lying on a blanket of grass. Kimono-wearing dancers swaying within a wall of leaves. Danish artist Anders Scrmn Meisner’s latest paintings draw on sense memories and the language of shared symbolism, inviting us into a cocoon of romance, beauty and connection.

 

The exhibition’s title painting Picked an Orange for a Renaissance Girl captures the mood. It evokes the idea of stepping back to a simpler time, when we were perhaps more in touch with the natural world and our emotions, when the gift and receipt of an orange was enough to convey love, admiration or simply, mutual understanding. But as with all of Meisner’s works, the line as well as the composition itself – an orange stretched almost to the full parameters of the canvas – has a playful knowingness about it. Here, the artist is relishing in the luxury of painting a piece of fruit, of imbuing it with importance, while in full awareness of the fact that we are not living in the time – or perceived romance – of the Renaissance. The delicate translucency of the orange’s green leaves gives way to a harshly contrasting background where black earth meets a red sky and a mysterious black moon. 

 

A similar tension is captured in the painting Thick Walls to Protect All Beauty. Here, we find ourselves standing at a wall painted with giant flowers, fruit and a decorative scalloped edge. It is a work of beauty in its own right as well as a shield, as the title suggests, against all forces which might disrupt or destroy beauty. At a time of global upheaval, it might feel like a necessary or even longed-for structure, but it is a barrier nonetheless and one we find ourselves standing outside of, even if the window and door suggest entry points. 

 

Meisner’s compositions are built from the lines that he jots down in his notebooks, which become the titles of the paintings that he paints onto the sidebars of his completed canvases. These act as wayfinders – clues offered after the viewer has first encountered the visual image. The effect of this can be equally destabilising as it is expansive. For instance, we might first encounter Escaped Pet-Bird as a kind of devotional image to an exotic, if not slightly awkward-looking bird, but after reading the title, an edge of anxiety creeps in, prompting questions around the life the bird lived before its newly acquired freedom and how it might cope now within the wild. Carefully Arranged, Night Time, Do Not Disturb depicts a dreamy scene of flowers and plants blowing in a midnight breeze, perhaps recalling memories of lying in the grass and of heavily scented gardens at night. But, again, when we read the title, we’re drawn to the carefully constructed nature of the painting and to a feeling of precariousness. 

 

There are less complicated moments of pleasure, too. Sleeping with Mama is drawn from Meisner’s images of his daughter crawling into bed with his wife when he is travelling, evoking the feeling of comfort and protection that sharing a bed with a parent can bring, while Lemon for gin and tonic or sorbet calls on our shared sense memory of the fruit’s familiar citrus tang and the joy and remembrance of indulging.

 

To Meisner, each work is only the first line of a story; how it continues – and where it leads – is left to us.