DANIEL JENSEN

The show brings together 13 artworks on canvas, gathered under the concept of Hypnagogia. The title Hover on the Edge of Sleep is a direct reference to the homonymous dream state, which is the moment of transition from wakefulness to sleep.

In this phase, phenomena such as lucid dreaming, sleep paralysis and chromatic hallucinations appear. Among the most common sensory features are phosphenes, which may manifest as apparently random, monochromatic or richly coloured dots, lines or geometric patterns. They are said to differ from dreams proper in that hypnagogic images are usually dynamic, without narrative content.

Daniel Jensen was born in Malmö, Sweden, in 1972, studied at the National Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo and currently lives in Stockholm. He began working with figuration, which he then gradually abandoned, leaving aside the figures and instead shifted his focus to the details in the background, enlarging small non-figurative shapes and lines. He works with soft pastel and charcoal on raw canvas, which allows him a greater speed and fluidity–compared to paint–while demonstrating a strong link to drawing and sketching.

Jensen thinks of his paintings as moving images, where the different elements such as line and colour are not static but relate to each other like transforming objects in distorted images. He works intuitively, adapting fluidly to the unforeseen events of the artistic process and time. His works are close to a moment of experience, of vision, an evolving image that he tries to capture. Daniel seeks a composition that makes the viewer react, inviting him to transit through his universe and to dialogue with his emotions through an exquisite chromatic selection of colours.