Jóhan Martin Christiansen is an installation artist who works both with found objects as well as with handmade plaster casts and stitched together, dyed fabrics.

Linens and cotton diapers along with cardboard and corrugated sheetsare a few among the many found materials Jóhan Martin Christiansen has repeatedly chosen to work with.

Jóhan Martin Christiansen cultivates an attraction in the decaying and worthless, taking on the Arte Povera interest in throw away materials. The found materials that he is using provide him with both information and impressions from the street and its life.

A Graphic Process

Jóhan Martin Christiansen’s style is sensual, tactile and aesthetic-conscious. Using body-related formats and materials he explores the past stored in them. He tries to form simple connections between the objects he finds, the landscape and the body.

He refers to his work with casts as a sort of graphic process. For Jóhan Martin Christiansen, they form afterimages of the landscape. They carry the tangible traces of the landscape in which they were created. It can both be imprinted traces of rocks or bits of dried grass that sticks to the plaster.

Etching Project

Jóhan Martin Christiansen’s aesthetic-conscious artistic style characterizes also his work with traditional printmaking techniques. Composing his image Jóhan Martin Christiansen takes his departing point in the world around him. A random object is taken as the starting point for the construction of a composition. Jóhan Martin Christiansen then decomposes the subject of his “representation” abandoning the initial object of his inspiration in favour of an abstract composition. The reference to the body comes in the form of agitated and energetic mark-making. It looks as if Jóhan Martin Christiansen is trying to transcend the two-dimensionality of the printing media attempting to invade the reality of the spectator with his energetic composition.

Jóhan Martin Christiansen, born 1987, Tórshavn, Faroe Islands. Lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark. He received an MFA from Malmö Art Academy (SE).

Jóhan Martin Christiansen’s recent exhibitions and site-specific installations include FALL, Víngarðurin, Tórshavn (FO), You are a flower, and in the winter, I miss You, Heerz Tooya, Veliko Turnovo (BG), tell me more, tell me more, FLAG project, North Atlantic House, Copenhagen (DK). His work is included in the collections of The Danish Arts Foundation (DK), National Gallery of Faroe Islands (FO) and Nuuk Art Museum (GL). Jóhan Martin Christiansen is the recipient of the Carl Nielsen and Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen Talent Award.