Archetypes Henrik Godsk

Henrik Godsk (b.1975, Hjørring, DK) presents Archetypes, his second solo exhibition with Ruttkowski;68 in Paris.

Through his paintings, Godsk focuses on the universal human experience by representing well-known archetypes. He simultaneously draws attention to the fact that reality cannot be understood solely through grand narratives, but rather through an interplay between shared narratives and individual experiences.

Carl Gustav Jung believed that people inherit collective memories from their ancestors over generations, forming archetypes that influence our thoughts, actions, and behaviour. The characters in Godsk’s works refer to well-known archetypes such as the lover, the ruler, and the warrior, while, for example, the traveller, the acrobat, and the fortune teller are archetypes formed from Godsk’s personal life experiences and upbringing in a travelling fair.

Godsk is preoccupied with creating dynamics in the painterly language. Accordingly, some lines are completely sharp, almost mechanical, while others show signs of hand movements and are more organic. Godsk refers to these approaches as digital and analogue methods, respectively, and the meeting between the two approaches creates vibrations and dialogues in the materiality of the work. In this series of works for Ruttkowski;68, the colour intensity has been turned up, and there is a clear development in Godsk’s colour palette.

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