Something Spinning

de boer (Antwerp) is proud to present Something Spinning, a solo exhibition by Norwegian-born, Antwerp-based painter Karsten Krogh-Hansen (b. 1997, Oslo), whose recent works explore the unstable relationship between representation, recollection and absurdity in our current day and age. Working between larger oil paintings on linen, and smaller distemper paintings including stone powders, glues and pigments on panel, including artist-frames wrapped in printed textiles, his dual approach invites a sustained engagement with how we recognize, archive, and transform images. Something Spinning centers around an evocative instability. The works oscillate visually and emotionally, between clarity and dissolution. Figures and forms emerge, recede, and flicker in and out of legibility. Whether depicting vague architectural structures with bending shadows, sun-faced anthropomorphisms, or anonymous figures doing silent gestures, the paintings maintain a rhythm of slippage. “The image is never at rest,” says Krogh-Hansen. “It rotates, stutters, [and] hovers…never fully resolving.” This is not simply a matter of technique, but a conceptual framework that connects his pictorial vocabulary to the vast stream of media. The large oil paintings are often hazy, with withering figures fading into luminous backgrounds. The distemper paintings, framed with patterned fabric, recall woodcut prints or medieval frescoes that tap into archetypal motifs, such as windows and shadows. Krogh-Hansen treats these two modes as separate forms of making: "objects and images", yet they maintain a dialectical relationship. Installed together, the paintings engage each other, building tension between the form and depiction, between material presence and imagery. In one standout work, a softened rendering of the sun reveals a face with quietly haunted eyes—at once comforting and uncanny. This solar image, common in medieval and Renaissance iconography, is here drained of symbolic certainty and re-invested with emotional ambiguity. Krogh-Hansen’s figures often avoid specificity in favor of a shared psychological resonance. They are familiar, but not personal. By blurring the edges of form and identity, his works reflect the instability of contemporary vision, a reverberation of stored images, machine-made distortions, and the fragile traces of what cannot be remembered fully. Karsten Krogh-Hansen (b. 1997, Oslo, Norway; based in Antwerp, Belgium) is a visual artist working primarily in painting. He holds an MFA in visual arts from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp. Krogh-Hansen's work explores the evolving role of imagery in contemporary culture, shaped by popular culture, mass media, and collective memory. He often transforms iconographic elements that are familiar to us all, into something more intimate and psychological. He actively archives digital imagery, collecting fragments from the vast stream of media. This process has become an integral part of his practice, shaping the way he engages with painting. Beyond imagery, his work reflects a continued interest in the history and materiality of painting. Recent solo and group exhibitions include those at de boer, Los Angeles, US; Forbidden City, Antwerp, BE; Christian Torp Kunsthandel, Oslo, NO; Nosbaum Reding Gallery, Brussels, BE.