Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Malene Hartmann Rasmussen

 Danish artist Malene Hartmann Rasmussen works with figurative narrative sculpture and installation, creating work from individual hand-modelled ceramics and found objects.Graduating with an MA from Royal College of Art in 2011, she also studied at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of Design in Denmark.Rasmussen is part of a vanguard of artists who choose not to define themselves by discipline or craft but instead blur the boundaries between Applied Art, Design and Fine Art, with exceptional handcraftsmanship at its core.The artist works with mixed media sculpture, making and arranging multiple components into complex narrative tableaux of visual excess.Rasmussen’s ornate ceramics may initially appear excessively sweet, but upon closer inspection reveal themselves as impossible and absurd objects, imbued with the artist’s own dark narrative.A recurring theme in her work is the forest and the mythological creatures that lurk in the dark woods. She weaves together notions of memories, daydreams and childhood nostalgia into a fairy-tale of her own making.“Folklore relating to Scandinavia is a great inspiration and something I have grown up with during my childhood and adolescence in my native Denmark,” says Malene Hartmann Rasmussen.“I want my work to look like a very skilled child could have made it, clumsy and elaborate at the same time. Initially the viewer may, mistakenly, be drawn to my figures thinking them to be toys; however closer examination reveals their rather darker narrative.”

More of Malene Hartmann Rasmussen’s remarkable artwork can be found at https://www.malenehartmannrasmussen.com/ and https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2023/10/malene-hartmann-rasmussen-ceramics/.