Bente Christensen-Ernst Exhibition at Millî Reasürans Art Gallery:

Subtle Oscillations Between Reality and Illusion

December 10, 2002-January 11, 2003

Millî Reasürans Art Gallery is hosting a painting exhibition by Danish artist Bente Christensen-Ernst. Bente lives in Istanbul (Tünel), Bodrum (Gümüşlük) and Frederiksberg (Denmark). She works in all three cities. The impressions she receives from three different worlds are integrated in Bente's artistic world and on her canvas.

Bente's relations with Turkey go back a long way and Turkey has an important place in the development of her art. She opened her first solo exhibition in Ankara in 1984. Her first exhibition in Denmark was held in Copenhagen in 1990. She worked in Denmark between 1990-1996, organized exhibitions and received positive criticism from art circles. Two of his works were selected for The National Gallery on Frederiksborg Castle and the Danish Art Fund museums. He became a member of the Danish Artists' Association. In later years, his paintings were transported between Turkey and Denmark. He participated in group exhibitions in Sweden, Germany and France.

A significant portion of the paintings in Bente's exhibition at the Millî Reasürans Art Gallery consist of his Bodrum works. Some of these paintings were exhibited in Denmark.

Objects selected from daily life and human portraits hold an important place in Bente's paintings. In this respect, he gives the impression of a realistic, even overly realistic artist. However, on Bente's canvas, familiar real objects are taken to another dimension with their dimensions, frames, light and shadow effects and turn into an illusion or a fictionalization. Bente draws the viewer, whom he captures with a striking reality, into his own fantastic world. This subjective world hidden by apparent reality and the subtle jokes, mischief in the artist's presentation of this view, the metaphor he creates between reality and illusion, reveal the mysterious appeal of Bente's paintings. The objectivity on her canvas, in a way, turns into a symbolic image that makes the viewer question reality or what that reality hides. This orientation also forms the basis of Bente’s understanding of art, which she calls “alternative realism”. It must be admitted that Turkey offers very rich and colorful imagery to Bente’s world of painting.

Bente paints her paintings on large-sized canvases. She works on the object or human portrait she chooses on this canvas in a very simple manner. She does not include other objects. She prefers black as a background, which highlights and frames the object she chooses more clearly. With a special painting technique, she can use the light and shadow effects as she wishes.

Bente’s paintings made of vegetables and fruits attract attention in her exhibition at Millî Reasürans. In the paintings, vegetables and fruits are presented in a flawless form. This presentation makes the dimension of realism of the paintings felt in a way. However, when you see a 5 cm Bodrum tangerine on its own on a 150x150 cm canvas, the tangerine turns into a fantastic object, even though it gives the impression of being real enough to be able to smell it. This is Bente’s first illusion in her pursuit of reality, which begins with the audience’s familiar notions of proportion and size.

Bente continues her game with reality, presenting her paintings with special names. For example, a red cabbage cut in half, with its white veins branching out in the middle, is called “Hand”, a red, regular-shaped, smooth-surfaced fresh tomato is called “Mars”, a robust cabbage with very distinct veins and leaf folds is called “Creature”, a Kırkağaç melon is called “Sunrise”, a New World pile is called “Crowd”, a Bodrum tangerine with a scent is called “Koh-e Nur” (the world’s largest apple). With these names, Bente creates a similarity between the object on her canvas and another object in our world, transforming the plain reality on the canvas into an illusion, forcing the viewer to look at her canvas in a different way. This forcing is especially noticeable in her paintings, where she gives erotic impressions to her objects. For example, while two lemons on a black background give the impression of a pair of breasts, Bente does not stop there, and indirectly announces this impression once again with the name she gives to the painting, “Silicon”. In her paintings such as “Those Waiting”, “Sitting”, “Fell” etc., she takes viewers on mysterious paths between realism and eroticism with apples, pears, peppers etc.

The same understandings can be seen in portraits and hand details in Bente’s paintings that focus on people. The wounded and masked human faces in her portraits titled “20th Century” cease to be portraits with their names and turn into a questioning of the century. The 150x150 cm monumental henna palm of Hatice from Bodrum, which the artist named “Wedding”, and the lines that are made more apparent by the henna, evoke the mystery of life and destiny with the meanings attributed to these lines and that come to mind immediately.

In the catalogue prepared for the exhibition, Evrim Altuğ explains Bente’s world of painting as follows: “Bente is a patient painter. She is as detailed as a social anthropologist. In a world where all kinds of smallness and bigness intertwine, the artist who turns physical dimensions and perceptual dimensions upside down continues Gulliver’s travels on canvas. The painter who looks at ‘small lives’ through large mirrors and large worlds through the window of small details compares objects with us, us with the world, and the world with the universe in an endless circle. She reproduces the reality and representation that constitute the world with a unique irony and interprets it with a critical perspective.”