Morten Schelde’s work depicts the intersection of physical and imaginary spaces. His drawings, paintings and photographic works sample images from different media, collecting and combining them in the construction of new narratives and blurring reality and fiction in the process.

Through this recycling and re-invention of images he explores the gap between romance and melancholy, belief and scepticism, mirroring and obstructing. However, this is not a nostalgia trip or ‘boy’s own’ adventure. Within his ‘inner landscapes’ Schelde creates a new universe, where the unfamiliar penetrates, populated by shadowy scenes, figures, and objects.

Using computer technology, his processes of drawing are expanded via this technology, where he often fuses photographic imagery with drawn lines, layering one form over the other to conceal or reveal thus creating compositions that have an intense multi-layered aesthetic. This exhibition consists of large-scale photographic prints that come together to form a mystical journey of travelling through the woods into spaces that both exist in reality but also within one’s mind’s eye. These luminous prints are heavily drawn, with imagery depicting real and fictional scenes that often contain hidden elements that describe at times a dark or playful humour. Other works in the exhibition are ‘pure’ pencil drawings made on paper but yet again, the narrative of the real against the unreal encircle the sheets on which they are revealed.

In the woods, a 16-page, full-colour, illustrated catalogue containing a commissioned essay by Mike Golding with a Danish translation by Anne Vibeke Mou is available from Vane’s Shop for £5.

Morten Schelde biography