NEW YORK, NY.- This summer, BDG welcomes accomplished multimedia artist Peter Martensen for an important solo exhibition in New York City. The Danish national is a talented visual artist, painter, sculptor and musician. This all-new show, entitled The Power Of Silence, will feature large works on canvas, charcoal drawings on paper and lithographs. Using a limited palette of subdued colors, Martensen’s works confront today’s busy, modern society and the isolation and loss of individuality that is possible within such a crowded space.

Martensen’s works are eerie, surreal worlds, universes freed from temporal and geographical restraints. They recall masters, such as Thomas Eakins and Lucien Freud, as well as contemporaries Mark Tansey and Eric Fischl; however, Martensen has created a unique style distinctly his own. His pieces exist in unknown places of which the viewer knows little about. Martensen’s art is often triggered by newspaper photographs, television stills and historical events but he never reproduces these images exactly. Rather, he is inspired by the media and uses it as a starting point for his distinct and peculiar works.

Martensen renders his canvases in monochromatic color palettes – often choosing hues of grey and blue. The paintings, fraught with ambiguity and doubt, typically depict classically rendered yet anonymous figures. These figures, devoid of individuality, never connect with those around them – even when placed in a crowd. With a dark sense of humor and clever hints of science fiction, Martensen’s compositions successfully juxtapose a sense of euphoria with the sinister unknown.

The artist, born in 1953 in Denmark, studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Odense, Denmark from 1971-1977 and consequently attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. His work has been included in BDG group exhibitions in the past and he has had numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout Europe. Martensen has been commissioned to make pieces for the NOKIA Head Office and Saxo Bank Head Office in Copenhagen, among several other corporate commissions. His work is part of several prominent public collections, including the Statens Museum in Denmark, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Gothenburg Art Museum in Sweden. He currently lives and works in Hellerup, a small Danish town just outside of Copenhagen.

Martensen has recently begun a residency in New York City (at the Point B studio space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn) and will use this time to prepare for his upcoming exhibition. He is available for interviews and will attend the opening reception on June 5.