ABOUT MY WORK

​

My recent work explores the unstable relationship between humans, animals and the natural world. I am particularly interested in the constructed environments of contemporary life — urbanisation, consumption and architecture — and in how animals and nature re-enter these spaces in unexpected and sometimes absurd ways.

​​

​​Mette Vangsgaard develops a multidisciplinary practice exploring the unstable relationship between humans, animals and nature in a contemporary world shaped by urbanisation, consumption and environmental crisis.​ The works capture the psychological polarities in our perception of nature: catastrophe and harmony, beauty and horror. The artworks are not concerned with the essence of nature ‘in itself’, but rather with human beings’ ideas and conceptions of it.

​

Vangsgaard engages with urban structures and the experience of city space as well as nature as space. Her work ranges from refined, color-sensitive expressions to the raw and unpolished, reflecting a dynamic and multifaceted portrait of our time. Viewers are often invited into an emotional and social dialogue with both the urban and the natural landscapes she portrays.

​

​She is an attentive observer of social reality, yet her visual language is not social-realist. Rather, it is a distinctive and paradoxical fusion of motifs drawn from the everyday contemporary world with elements associated with “reality-distant” movements such as Symbolism, Expressionism, and Naïvism, combined with a contemporary awareness of the image as a sign.

​

​​Mette Vangsgaard lives and works in Funen, Denmark. She holds an MFA from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. In 2011, she was awarded a three-year working grant by the Danish Arts Foundation.