"WINGS OF SILENCE"

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Preben Johansen’s paintings explore the space between perception, memory and abstraction.

His work is built through reduction. Layers of paint are applied, revised and partially removed, allowing traces of earlier gestures to remain within the surface. Light, colour and line become the essential elements of the image.

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Johansen works intuitively, balancing control with chance. Each painting evolves slowly, through successive gestures and decisions, until only what is necessary remains.

In Wings of Silence, ballet becomes a central source of inspiration.

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The series draws upon the language of the dancer — the precision of a gesture, the discipline of the body, the tension between strength and delicacy, and the extraordinary illusion of weightlessness. A movement can be both rigorously controlled and seemingly effortless.

Johansen translates these qualities into painting.

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The figure is reduced to a line, a curve, a fragment or a suspended form. The anatomy disappears, while the gesture remains. What matters is not the dancer itself, but the movement that passes through the body.

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A body becomes a gesture.
A gesture becomes a trace.
Movement becomes silence.

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The paintings hover between the physical and the ethereal, between the discipline of ballet and the freedom of abstraction.

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Wings of Silence is an exploration of movement without sound — the brief moment in which the dancer appears to leave the ground, suspended between gravity and flight.

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"WINGS OF SILENCE"

 

Preben Johansens malerier bevæger sig i rummet mellem erindring, perception og abstraktion.

 

Hans billeder opstår gennem en proces af reduktion. Lag efter lag tilføjes, forandres og forsvinder igen. Tilbage står sporene — af lys, farve, linje og bevægelse.

 

Intuition møder disciplin.

Kontrol møder det uforudsete.

 

Maleriet udvikler sig langsomt, indtil alt overflødigt er forsvundet, og kun det nødvendige står tilbage.

 

I Wings of Silence træder balletten ind som en poetisk resonans.

 

Danserens bevægelse. Kroppens præcision. Styrken i det kontrollerede. Letheden i det næsten umulige.

 

Johansen oversætter bevægelsen til maleriets eget sprog.

 

En linje bliver til en gestus.

En kurve antyder en krop.

Et fragment fastholder et øjeblik.

 

Anatomien opløses. Bevægelsen består.

 

Det er ikke danseren, der er motivet, men det øjeblik, hvor kroppen overskrider sin egen tyngde.

 

Hvor styrke bliver lethed.

Hvor bevægelse bliver spor.

Hvor stilhed får form.

 

Wings of Silence kredser om dette flygtige mellemrum — øjeblikket mellem jord og luft, mellem kontrol og frihed, mellem det fysiske og det æteriske.

Et øjeblik, hvor kroppen synes at forsvinde. Og bevægelsen bliver tilbage.