Showers. Mathias Toubro. January 19 - February 17, 2024

Showers by Mathias Toubro is an exhibition about the passing of times, being together, recurrent art movements and artifices, and places that serve as extensions of the artist’s studio.

Hung on the wall, the work Wet Spectre resembles a huge squared eye surveilling the entire space or a cloud carrying tomorrow’s weather. It looks like rain. On closer inspection, a loosely organised grid of pencil lines fill the entire surface, as well as several marks of what appear to be drink glasses, sprinkled over the structure as though a kind of gathering has been taking place around a bar counter. 

The Shower Suite paintings are displayed in booths. By cutting found photographs into pieces and gluing them back together, tiny shifts in perspective appear resulting in a strange change in meaning. Paint in varying thicknesses is added in several layers, only to be scraped off and re-painted. Traces of the processes and images that once were are shining through in the final image. The paintings are not flat. They have a curious physicality. More object than image, roughly bruised surfaces in bas-relief with, perhaps especially important here, a ghostly presence of other artists’ work.

On three TV monitors a muted video is aired on a MTV-like programme called Ventilator. It appears as some kind of a pastiche of a 90s avant-garde music video crossing the boundaries between fine art and pop culture. Without the music we are left with the surface, the make-up and the posing.

Where are we? When? A wormhole into the past? Is it some kind of nostalgia? A specific period. 10 years. One setting. A scene for socialising, art being socialised on the walls. The meeting outside the studio. The first stabilising factor. The whole spectacle around it. How can this seem relevant today? Back then it was niche, then canonised, then copied and decayed. Is it coming back into style and has it some kind of impact on a general public, or is it only interesting to some artists and art historians who believe in ghosts?

Mathias Toubro works with environments, both as staged social performative events and in his image production. In his recent series, Toubro portrays the artist bar as a significant site for the artist to nurture their network and get inspiration. He draws information from historically important places such as Antico Caffè Greco in Rome, Les Deux Magots in Paris, Krasnapolsky and Andy’s Bar both in Copenhagen. By incorporating personal experience and actual material from the restaurant business in his artistic practice, Toubro’s environments become equal parts realistic and illusory. 

Mathias Toubro (DK, 1986) holds a MFA from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (2016) and Central Academy of Fine Arts Beijing (2012). Recent and upcoming exhibitions include: Etablissement d’en Face (Brussels), Damian & the Love Guru (Brussels), Lagune Ouest (Copenhagen), Cucina (Copenhagen), Kunstverein Hamburg (Hamburg), Éclair (Berlin), and Salon 75 (Frederiksberg). As Mathias & Mathias he exhibited at Holstebro Kunstmuseum (Holstebro), Overgaden (Copenhagen), Heart Museum of Contemporary Art (Herning), Tranen (Gentofte) and Last Resort Gallery (Copenhagen). Toubro is the recipient of Anne Marie Carl Nielsen’s talent prize (2020), the Niels Wessel Bagge’s prize (2018) and the Sven Dalsgaard reward (2018). His work is represented both in private and public collections such as The Danish National Gallery (SMK).

All photos by Malle Madsen

Showers by Mathias Toubro is an exhibition about the passing of times, being together, recurrent art movements and artifices, and places that serve as extensions of the artist’s studio.

Hung on the wall, the work Wet Spectre resembles a huge squared eye surveilling the entire space or a cloud carrying tomorrow’s weather. It looks like rain. On closer inspection, a loosely organised grid of pencil lines fill the entire surface, as well as several marks of what appear to be drink glasses, sprinkled over the structure as though a kind of gathering has been taking place around a bar counter.

The Shower Suite paintings are displayed in booths. By cutting found photographs into pieces and gluing them back together, tiny shifts in perspective appear resulting in a strange change in meaning. Paint in varying thicknesses is added in several layers, only to be scraped off and re-painted. Traces of the processes and images that once were are shining through in the final image. The paintings are not flat. They have a curious physicality. More object than image, roughly bruised surfaces in bas-relief with, perhaps especially important here, a ghostly presence of other artists’ work.

On three TV monitors a muted video is aired on a MTV-like programme called Ventilator. It appears as some kind of a pastiche of a 90s avant-garde music video crossing the boundaries between fine art and pop culture. Without the music we are left with the surface, the make-up and the posing.

Where are we? When? A wormhole into the past? Is it some kind of nostalgia? A specific period. 10 years. One setting. A scene for socialising, art being socialised on the walls. The meeting outside the studio. The first stabilising factor. The whole spectacle around it. How can this seem relevant today? Back then it was niche, then canonised, then copied and decayed. Is it coming back into style and has it some kind of impact on a general public, or is it only interesting to some artists and art historians who believe in ghosts?

Mathias Toubro works with environments, both as staged social performative events and in his image production. In his recent series, Toubro portrays the artist bar as a significant site for the artist to nurture their network and get inspiration. He draws information from historically important places such as Antico Caffè Greco in Rome, Les Deux Magots in Paris, Krasnapolsky and Andy’s Bar both in Copenhagen. By incorporating personal experience and actual material from the restaurant business in his artistic practice, Toubro’s environments become equal parts realistic and illusory.

Mathias Toubro (DK, 1986) holds a MFA from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (2016) and Central Academy of Fine Arts Beijing (2012). Recent and upcoming exhibitions include: Etablissement d’en Face (Brussels), Damian & the Love Guru (Brussels), Lagune Ouest (Copenhagen), Cucina (Copenhagen), Kunstverein Hamburg (Hamburg), Éclair (Berlin), and Salon 75 (Frederiksberg). As Mathias & Mathias he exhibited at Holstebro Kunstmuseum (Holstebro), Overgaden (Copenhagen), Heart Museum of Contemporary Art (Herning), Tranen (Gentofte) and Last Resort Gallery (Copenhagen). Toubro is the recipient of Anne Marie Carl Nielsen’s talent prize (2020), the Niels Wessel Bagge’s prize (2018) and the Sven Dalsgaard reward (2018). His work is represented both in private and public collections such as The Danish National Gallery (SMK).

All photos by Malle Madsen