‘Brick Sculptures’
Per Kirkeby, ‘Brick Sculptures’
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Wijnegem
Pictures of the exhibition
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Exhibition view Axel Vervoordt Gallery 
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Exhibition view Axel Vervoordt Gallery 
![]()
Exhibition view Axel Vervoordt Gallery
Per Kirkeby, ‘Brick Sculptures’
From →
Wijnegem
Story of the exhibition
Axel Vervoordt Gallery is pleased to present a major exhibition of brick sculptures by acclaimed Danish artist, Per Kirkeby (1938 – 2018), opening on Saturday, September 14, 2019, and continuing through Saturday February 22, 2020.
“Why Bricks? I do not know. But I cannot do it with other materials. I have tried. I lie on the couch for a moment and am back in my childhood. Bricks everywhere. The Grundtvig church and its surroundings. The council housing from the thirties and forties—which for me, still represent the peak of Danish architectural achievement. Train journeys in the summer holidays with a ticket hanging around one’s neck. The brick station buildings. The railway towns… It is the mood, the brick’s load of memories and stories… other gains were color, light, the concentration of the fantastic, organic material… aesthetic aspects of a far too pleasurable character.”
Per Kirkeby ‘Brick Sculptures’
Patio Gallery
Axel Vervoordt Gallery- Kanaal, Belgium
14 September 2019 – 23 November 2019
Organised in collaboration with the artist’s longtime collaborator for the brick works, Arne Fremmich and jsvc Projects, London.
Courtesy the Estate of Per Kirkeby and Galleri Susanne Ottesen, Copenhagen
With the support of Wienerberger Nv.
Following two historic exhibitions of brick sculptures at Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris (2017) and at Museum Jorn, Silkeborg (2018), this is the first exhibition of the brick sculptures in Europe since the artist’s death last year.
Kanaal’s Patio Gallery space is filled with five small sculptures. Læsø, IX, X, XII and XV created in Læsø, on the site of the artist’s property in Denmark and testing ground for the brick sculptures. They have not been shown publicly since Kirkeby first created them in the years between 1982-1989. These four works are accompanied by London (1986), a major work first built for the roof terrace of London’s Hayward Gallery.
Trained as a geologist, Per Kirkeby became a romantic and heroic abstract Nordic painter, yet he is best known for his brick sculptures that he created throughout his career from 1966 till his death. Some of these brick works have been made for historic exhibitions and public forums like Documenta, La Biennale di Venezia, as well as museum and gallery exhibitions throughout the world. His wider artistic practice included painting, drawings and watercolors, bronze sculpture, printmaking, writing, performance, and film work.
One part of Kirkeby’s brick works are these singular sculptures. A second part is the two dozen unrealised large-scale projects, like the sculpture ‘Nordhorn’ on view in the Escher Gallery at Kanaal, that Kirkeby made for public commissions and museum projects, but for one reason or another, these were never built. The third part of his brick works oeuvre include permanent installations and commissions, e.g. the untitled sculpture realised in Middelheim Sculpture Park, Antwerp in 1993 for the exhibition ‘Nieuwe Beelden’, created on the occasion of Antwerp, European Cultural Capital. These three groups will make up a three-volume catalogue raisonné of the brick works now in preparation with Museum Jorn, Silkeborg, Galleri Susanne Ottesen, Copenhagen, to be published by Walter Koenig Verlag.
The total oeuvre of Kirkeby’s brick works hold a particular position in the history of European Minimalism; the first works in 1966 appear at the same time as the Americans Carl Andre, Sol Lewitt, and Donald Judd began their investigations into industrial materials and shapes to suggest another way of looking and experiencing a new singularity of form.