Freddie A. Lerche: 85-year birthday exhibition (093)

Andersen was honoured and delighted to present an exhibition celebrating Freddie A. Lerche on the occasion of his 85th birthday. The exhibition consisted of works from 1976–2017 — a period spanning more than 40 years, during which Freddie Lerche has consistently and insistently explored and pursued his idea and vision of painting.

Freddie Lerche is a painter. He paints paintings. His paintings are not figurative, as they do not refer to figures outside the painting. They are not abstract, as they are not abstractions of figuration. They are not images, as his works do not depict anything. As he himself puts it, he paints “imageless paintings” that liberate painting from the painterly. This is what he has been dedicated to for over five decades.
At first glance, Freddie A. Lerche’s imageless paintings may appear monochrome. However, they are not painted with a single colour, but rather with multiple colours applied by brush in numerous layers — one thin layer after another, sometimes up to 200 times. The first layers soak into the canvas and are given time to dry slowly. The subsequent layers then dry more quickly.
It is difficult to define what Freddie A. Lerche’s paintings are, because they are not intended to portray or refer to anything at all. Quite simply, Freddie A. Lerche wants them to be — in and of themselves.
According to Freddie, he sees no reason, for example, to transform a duck into paint. Even though his paintings may appear stringent, they do not demand any prior knowledge or assumptions from the viewer. Rather, they ask for the viewer’s full presence and attentiveness in front of the works. That completely open presence between work and viewer may well be the most important key to understanding and experiencing Freddie A. Lerche’s paintings.
Freddie A. Lerche (b. 1937, Denmark) lives and works in Copenhagen. His works are represented in numerous public collections across Denmark, including the National Gallery of Denmark (SMK), KUNSTEN in Aalborg, Herning Museum of Contemporary Art, Randers Art Museum, and Esbjerg Art Museum, to name just a few. Throughout his career, Lerche has held various guest professorships at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, and his achievements have been recognised with numerous awards and honours — most notably the prestigious Thorvaldsen Medal in 2011.