Ordrupgaard will present the exhibition ”BALKE & KIRKEBY. Distant horizons” from March 5 to June 21 2009, showing paintings by the Norwegian romantic landscape painter, Peder Balke, together with works by the Danish contemporary artist, Per Kirkeby.

The exhibition will for the first time confront the Danish artist with one of the spiritual affinities he values the most. Both artists have each in their own time reached for the sublime, whether it was for the grand dramas of geology or for the landscapes of distant and desolate areas. The point of departure of the exhibition is the book which Per Kirkeby wrote in 1996 about the romantic and visionary Peder Balke. Although the wanderings and inspirations of the two artists are almost 200 years apart, there is a clear kinship as to both motifs and painting techniques. Both artists seek to frame their sublime experiences in renderings of landscapes with very simple but radical means. Kirkeby calls them his painterly tricks. These ‘tricks’ have a long and vivid but overlooked tradition, represented by the way Balke mixes the techniques of an artist with those of a housepainter and the way Kirkeby uses graining and marbling techniques.