Continuous Additions: The Layered Worlds of Asger Harbou Gjerdevik
Image courtesy the artist.
In the work of the Danish artist, cultural icons, personal histories, and the weight of bronze converge to form an ongoing, restless dialogue between the figurative and the abstract.
The studio of Asger Harbou Gjerdevik is less a workspace than it is a site of constant excavation and assembly. Located within the weathered brickwork of an old industrial building, the atmosphere is defined by a sense of rhythmic accumulation. Sketches for future paintings are pinned over printed logos, dried paint splatters form unintended topographies on the floor, and models for upcoming exhibitions serve as maps for a practice that refuses to stand still. For Gjerdevik, the creative process is not about reaching a definitive conclusion but rather about maintaining a state of continuous movement, where every motif, material, and memory is fair game for inclusion.
This sensibility, characterized by layered references and an almost obsessive interest in how images travel through culture, has established Gjerdevik as a vital voice in contemporary Danish art. Whether he is working on a monumental scale for high court commissions or crafting intimate, patinated bronze sculptures, his work maintains a unique tension between the playful and the profound. It is a practice built on the understanding that no image exists in isolation; each is a node in a vast, shifting network of collective consciousness and personal identity.
Origins
Born in 1986 in Denmark, Asger Harbou Gjerdevik represents a generation of artists whose education was shaped by the cosmopolitan rigor of London after the turn of the millennium. His formative years were spent navigating the distinct pedagogical environments of two of the world's most prestigious art institutions. He first earned his BFA (Hons) in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins in 2014, a school known for its experimental and multidisciplinary approach. This was followed by an MFA in Painting from the Royal College of Art in 2017, an experience that deepened his engagement with the history and materiality of the medium.
These years in London were critical in developing Gjerdevik's ability to synthesize disparate styles. In his school years, he moved between the 2D pathway of Central Saint Martins and the more intensive painting focus of the RCA, learning to treat the canvas and the three-dimensional object as interchangeable parts of a single visual vocabulary. This duality remains a hallmark of his career today, where a drawing might inform a sculpture, and a sculpture might appear as a ghost within a large-scale oil painting.
The practice
Gjerdevik describes his practice as one involving continuous additions, transformations, and overlays. His works rarely feel finished in a traditional sense; instead, they represent a moment of pause in a process of perpetual change. This approach has led to a prolific output across painting, sculpture, collage, and drawing, each medium feeding into the others to create complex, boundless pictorial spaces. This boundlessness is perhaps best captured in his recent solo exhibitions, such as 'In Motion' at Alice Folker Gallery (2025), where the works acted as a collective soundscape, or in his words, an individual music album where each piece stands alone yet contributes to a grander narrative.
His exhibition history is extensive, spanning solo shows at CCA Andratx and Politikens Forhal, as well as significant group participations at Den Frie Udstillingsbygning and the Skovgaard Museum. Beyond the gallery walls, Gjerdevik has successfully translated his studio practice into the permanent fabric of Danish institutions. His public commissions for the Danish Eastern and Western High Courts, as well as Tietgenskolen in Odense, demonstrate a capacity to handle historical and civic weight while maintaining his signature experimental edge. These works, often existing in public collections such as the City Council of Copenhagen, show an artist who is as comfortable with institutional gravity as he is with the lightness of mass culture.
References and influences
What makes Gjerdevik’s work particularly compelling is his egalitarian approach to visual culture. For him, everything is material. He draws no hard line between the sacred and the profane, the high and the low. In a single composition, one might encounter the MTV logo, the cherubic figures from Fiorucci advertising, or an emoji-like reduction of Edvard Munch’s 'The Scream'. These symbols are not merely borrowed; they are interrogated for their 'signal value', the established narratives they bring into the work, and how they might be misread or reinterpreted by a modern audience.
I find it exciting to treat as much as possible as material I can use in my pictures.
He is particularly fascinated by how certain images become universal, transcending language and time. He cites a Finnish proposal to use 'The Scream' as a non-verbal warning for nuclear waste burial sites, a testament to the face's ability to communicate anxiety for thousands of years. Conversely, he explores the fingerprint, a mark that is both deeply personal and a tool of impersonal registration in surveillance culture. This oscillation between the individual and the collective, the intimate and the institutional, provides the intellectual engine for his visual explorations.
In conversation
In recent discussions regarding his creative process, Gjerdevik often uses the metaphor of a deck of cards or a game of solitaire (kabale) to describe the construction of an exhibition. An exhibition, he suggests, is like a solitaire that must work out, a puzzle where every piece's placement depends on the others. This process is organic; a motif tested in one painting might be carried over to a sculpture, solving a formal problem in one place while creating a new opportunity in another.
An exhibition is like a game of solitaire that has to work out.
This 'eternal solitaire' ensures that his studio is always a site of dialogue. During the production of his 'In Motion' exhibition, the workspace was divided into specific zones: a projection room for investigating imagery, an area for testing color combinations, and a main wall where final choices were made against the canvas. This structured yet fluid environment allows Gjerdevik to process the vast amounts of references he collects, from French hip-hop beats to autobiographical novels like 'Papillon', distilling them into works that feel simultaneously ancient and urgent.
The works with Edition Solenne
The collaboration between Asger Harbou Gjerdevik and Edition Solenne resulted in 'Pyramid' (2021), a work that perfectly encapsulates the artist's ability to weave emotional depth into a rigorous material form. Standing 26 cm tall, the sculpture is cast in black patinated bronze, a material chosen for its unique ability to hold fine detail and its inherent sense of permanence. Bronze is an alloy that, by its very nature, outlasts the viewer, providing a physical record of the artist's hand that is hardened into a form of historical gravity.
In 'Pyramid', Gjerdevik explores the heavy themes of solitude, loss, and longing. Unlike the bright, often frenetic energy of his paintings, this sculpture offers a silhouette of quiet contemplation. The surface is highly textured and detailed, filled with engravings, rough indents, and deliberate marks that guide the viewer through a narrative of introspection. Each indent is an invitation to look closer, to see the sculpture not as a finished geometric shape, but as a topography of human emotion. The choice of the pyramid form, a shape traditionally associated with eternity and mourning, provides a structural anchor for these more fluid, difficult feelings.
The production of 'Pyramid' took place at Fonderia Artistica Mariani in Italy, a legendary foundry established in 1952. Using the traditional lost-wax method, the work begins with the artist’s original, which is captured in a flexible mould and then a wax replica. This wax is refined by hand before being encased in ceramic and fired. The final bronze is then poured into the resulting void, ensuring that every nuance of Gjerdevik’s original touch is preserved. The black patina is later achieved through a combination of heat and chemistry, sealed by hand to ensure that while the edition is limited to 30, each piece possesses a unique tonal depth.
Ultimately, 'Pyramid' acts as a bridge in Gjerdevik’s oeuvre. It takes the complex, boundless pictorial realms of his two-dimensional work and collapses them into a singular, dense object. It is a work that challenges the viewer to move beyond the material, to see the bronze not just as metal, but as a vessel for personal reflection. By bringing together the precision of Italian craftsmanship with the raw, emotional energy of his studio practice, Gjerdevik has created an object that is both a collector’s piece and a profound art-historical statement.
Closing
Asger Harbou Gjerdevik continues to expand the possibilities of what a contemporary practitioner can be. By embracing the chaos of the modern world and the structured beauty of classical materials, he creates a space where history and the present day can coexist. His work reminds us that art is never a closed loop; it is an ongoing dialogue, a game of solitaire where the cards are always being reshuffled, and the symbols we think we know are always waiting to reveal something new.
