Exhibited: “Det maleriske nu. Peter Hansen & Martin Bigum”, Faaborg Museum, 11 May - 16 December 2018 and Sophienholm, 23 February 2018–28 April 2019.

Although it might not always be appropriate or comme il faut to equate the artist with the person portrayed, it is difficult not to interpret the person portrayed as the painter himself in “The Vision”. The persuasive work is at once a subtle self-portrait and an artistic revelation. The painter who, in the reflection on his chemical element, sees it come to life in three-dimensional form as an insistent centrifugal force and a pictorial universe of possibilities. The floating, sculptural works are like a dream vision of paintings not yet realised; Compositions that grow out of a not-yet-secured matter and almost compete for the painter’s attention. The artist himself sits reflectively, slouched in an abstract piece of furniture, and even the folds in his clothes and smock are on their way to becoming a painting. It is not only the artist merging with his material, but also a forewarning of the exertion and the arm wrestling with the elements of the image that lie ahead: An ever-changing process that calls for creative discipline and persistence. The scene appears to be a studio: The cubically-divided windows resemble unprimed canvases, just waiting to be put to use. In that sense, the artist’s space is both a universe of possibilities and a lonely, post-modernist, God-forsaken place, charged with its own artistic demands and the audience’s implicit expectations. At the same time, the window section can perhaps be interpreted as a reference to Franciska Clausen’s “Stigen” (The Ladder) from 1922, which marked a shift in her art from naturalism to concrete, abstract imagery. Bigum’s “picture carousel” heralds a similar transformation into a new phase, where new, painterly insights and an unconventional, almost sculptural view of the painting and the plasticity of colour seem to come to life.