A work for a landing in Copenhagen Jazzhouse

A picture – executed with point of departure in the place (Jazzhouse) and proportioned to the space and the space’s existing image (colours, interior and function). “OFF-PICTURE no. 119 attempts to combine the physical and psychicessence of the place in the work on the wall.

The Space

The place houses performances of innovative and experimental jazz. It was therefore natural to take the images of jazz as a starting-point for the work.

The wall is an end wall on a landing, which can be seen from any point on the top floor of the building.

A 102 cm high panel gives one the impression that the wall was formerly decorated with a theatrical painting.

The wall also gives associations of collage and a place for pinning up cuttings, which fits in with the general image of the place. The place is part of a staircase – a landing, a pause between two floors and “a smokers’ precinct” in the break between two sequences of music. I have therefore chosen to work with interval pictures from jazz, pictures taken in, for instance, the dressing room, a kiss between lovers in the interval or the family being waved goodbye to, etc.

Comments

The physical space gained from a continuation of the red colour (from the side walls) as a background for a large unifying work on the end wall and from highlighting the proportions of the space and the staircase by hanging 12 copper lamps in the style of the place above the stairs – one for each slat in the banisters. Because of the size of the work, the function of the place as a discotheque and the placing of the work (people lean against it with beer and cigarettes in their hands) it was necessary to execute the work in a laminate (non-inflammable and washable).

To bring laminate into a space overlaid by the patina of years requires a material that has body. I have therefore chosen to work with pictures in a “transparent layer technique” so that the underlying shining through give sensuous life to the dead laminate.

Jazz often seems to move on a number of levels that barely seem connected. I have tried to let this knowledge permeate my composition.

In the composition itself, however, the utmost regard had to be paid to the proportions of the room. For instance, it was necessary somehow or other to gather the arch of the stairs above the work and the surrounding colours within the work itself. (White ceiling, yellowy terrazzo floor, red and green walls, etc.) The composition requires some huge leaps, as one sees it both at an incredibly big distance and from 15 cm – and at the same time it has to be so calm that drunks don’t fall down the stairs at the sight of it!

Which is why it became OFF-PICTURE no. 119.