Emily Gernild: Never Too Good to Be True

It is our great pleasure to present Never Too Good to be True, an exhibition of new paintings and drawings by Emily Gernild. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition at Galleri Bo Bjerggaard.

Gernild’s paintings have an antique air of flower paintings and still lifes with their lush tableaux of vegetables and wineglasses. Reinventing the tradition, Gernild renders classical subjects vibrant and current with tremendous artistic virtuosity. Born in 1985, the artist has studied at the Funen Art Academy and at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.

Above all, Gernild’s paintings are dynamic. Soft, bold strokes of colour blend with familiar subjects like wineglasses, lemons and horses – symbols laden with allusions to Christianity and mythology, and to art history. Take the lemon. In Christianity, lemons symbolize fidelity. But the lemons in Gernild’s paintings are not always fresh or even yellow. They mutate and morph, changing colour, darkening. Art historically, a delicately peeled lemon was a proverbial object in Dutch still lifes, denoting the imminent transience of all things. The dark side of life is also embraced in Gernild’s paintings, which often feature dark passages and pitch-black lemons.

In her catalogue essay, art critic Maria Kjær Themsen writes, “Above all, Gernild’s paintings are profoundly physical. They live, breathe and swirl in the dynamic brushwork. The growths are organic, the colours like blood and plant dye. Darkness is ever-present. In turn, Gernild’s simple subjects are also deeply existential.”

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with a text by art critic Maria Kjær Themsen.