RAINRAIN is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of Danish artist Theodor Nymark at the gallery’s online space SPEAKEASY. Titled Dear Landscape,, the exhibition marks Nymark’s latest attempt to explore ecology as both catalyst and resource for creativity, presenting a series of new paintings that continues the artist’s experiments with algae powder, or spirulina, with illustrations printed on durable fire- and water-resistant PVC. Accompanying the exhibition is a short film made by the artist and narrated with a letter addressed to the endearing landscape, responding to its changing features and bleak future amid the most serious climate crisis of our time.

RAINRAIN is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of Danish artist Theodor Nymark at the gallery’s online space SPEAKEASY. Titled Dear Landscape,, the exhibition marks Nymark’s latest attempt to explore ecology as both catalyst and resource for creativity, presenting a series of new paintings that continues the artist’s experiments with algae powder, or spirulina, with illustrations printed on durable fire- and water-resistant PVC. Accompanying the exhibition is a short film made by the artist and narrated with a letter addressed to the endearing landscape, responding to its changing features and bleak future amid the most serious climate crisis of our time.

This group of works is part of Nymark’s ongoing series “Drafts of Ecology,” which, with both projects and individual works, studies the theory and concept of ecology, and explores the terminology in biological, aesthetic, and political frameworks. Influenced by theorists like Timothy Morton, whose work investigates the intersection of object-oriented thought and ecological studies, the artist deploys ecology to launch into bigger questions. He seeks to examine this concept on a broader philosophical level and away from its common perception.

Nymark selects imagery from his thorough investigation into the Modern Breakthrough—a movement of naturalism and debating literature of Scandinavia that replaced Romanticism near the end of the 19th century. Through vector line drawings based on carefully selected paintings from Danish art history, the almost topographical illustrations and figures emerge. The images refer to representations of certain agricultural scenarios, such as the cycles of nutrition and the system it relies upon, pointing toward concepts of recycling history, rewriting it, and building new narratives from already existing ones.

The works also serve as a step further from Nymark’s ongoing painterly practice of inhabiting the algae powder in various mediums with different expressions and techniques. The artist uses algae to explore its materiality and utility. Not only is it a trendy nutritional superfood in contemporary bohemian life, but it also has significance for the world’s biosphere, with technological research counting biofuel, organic pigments, biodegradable plastics, and medicine. Algae thus take the role of essential material for the artist’s visual vocabulary, the tool for ecological narrative structures, and the nucleus of social and political discourse inherent in his practice.

Theodor Nymark (b. 1997) is a visual artist, musician, filmmaker, and curator based in Copenhagen, Denmark. He earned his BFA from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 2021, and is currently pursuing an MFA in Sculpture at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Nymark has recently held exhibitions at Servando Gallery (Havana, Cuba); Kerka Gallery (St. Petersburg, Russia); Overgaden institut for samtidskunst (Copenhagen, Denmark); Den Frie Udstillingsbygning (Copenhagen, Denmark); Brigade Gallery (Copenhagen, Denmark); Kunsthal Charlottenborg (Copenhagen, Denmark); Kur Space (Vienna, Austria); and Garage 9 Gallery (Bologna, Italy). His film The Picturesque Beast was included in the official selection of CPH:DOX Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival in 2021. Nymark is also the founder and curator of Salon 75.