Photo: Solenne Hyllemose
Leave-Taking (2025), Oil on cotton canvas, 175h x 195w cm
Photo: Emmarosa Verdoner Liebgen
Undercurrents marks Emmarosa Verdoner Liebgen’s first solo presentation at the gallery. Liebgen’s work was previously included in the 2024 group exhibition Sitrende at Galleri Maria Friis. Like excavated relics or forgotten dreams, the exhibition presents a series of paintings and etchings, exploring metamorphic states where human and natural forms collapse into one another. Working figuratively, her motifs shift between female figures, sea creatures and birds as bearers of transition and transformation. The works move through liminal spaces: between sleep and wakefulness, life and death, surface and depth. Dreamlike layers that flow beneath the visible. The show feels both archaic and psychologically introspective. The works recall the Symbolist and Surrealist impulse to visualise the unconscious, in some works even Norwegian Romanticism, yet through a contemporary, feminist lens that reclaims myth and metamorphosis as sites of tenderness,
grief and instability. The works move through various symbolic terrain: water, blood, mythological creatures, and the result is haunting, not because it’s dark but because it feels so lived, as if the paintings are remembering a feeling you can’t quite name. Through colour and gesture, they speak from the gut, as if trying to translate a fleeting feeling before it hardens into thought.
grief and instability. The works move through various symbolic terrain: water, blood, mythological creatures, and the result is haunting, not because it’s dark but because it feels so lived, as if the paintings are remembering a feeling you can’t quite name. Through colour and gesture, they speak from the gut, as if trying to translate a fleeting feeling before it hardens into thought.
Vein (2025), Oil on linen canvas, 100h x 91w cm
Photo: Emmarosa Verdoner Liebgen
Weight of Air (2025), Oil on linen canvas, 100h x 70w cm
Photo: Emmarosa Verdoner Liebgen
Photo: Solenne Hyllemose
Photo: Solenne Hyllemose
Photo: Solenne Hyllemose
Photo: Solenne Hyllemose