Carl Emil Jacobsen

As an ode to the richness of natural colours in the Nordic landscape, Jacobsen brings new life to the powdered stone by converting it into layers of pigment, as in the crisp shells of his Powder Variations. These sculptures involve a special emphasis on color, light and shadow, and the ability of a form to enhance the experience of a specific color and texture. The stone pigments are also used as fillings in Jacobsen’s ‘scarified’ concrete sculptures Red Volumes and Black Lines, whereas his iron sculptures, some polished, some burnt, are created intuitively out of welding work without preliminary studies, resulting in fragmented pieces hammered together to instinctive forms. Inspired by the dictum of late Danish sculptor Willy Ørskov’s theory that “the content of the sculpture is sculpture”, his nonfigurative sculptures exist on their own terms as abstract, physical forms fostering experiential connection over intellectual interference in the elastic borderland between nature and culture.