I knew very little about Armsrock before going to Signal gallery but I was pretty sure I would get to see something different, the sort of show where you feel you have a new experience.

Danish artist, Armsrock’s medium is charcoal and for his solo show he uses huge piece of rice paper. I stepped into Signal and looked up right away, immediately curtains of drawings appeared in front of me, suspended all around the gallery. If you did not know about what Armsrock was trying to achieve with this show, it would probably take you a few seconds to realise that what you are looking at is actually Armsrock’s artwork.

It is hard to focus on one piece at the time because it is all encompassing; it dominates you. Armsrock wanted to give a feeling of intensity, says the chap from Signal gallery. The setting is as overwhelming as the work depicts – scenes of the communist and socialist Denmark taken from old newspapers. Most of them are hard to clearly understand at first glance but definitely seem far from being bucolic.

Charcoal is a difficult medium to express detail but Armsrock achieves just using the tricky support that is rice paper. Despite this, he can also convey these concepts on the equally difficult medium of wood, as the video below will show you.

Lastly, in the corner of the gallery, I almost missed some of the more emotive and telling stories that his tiny pencil drawings conveyed – sort of frozen life snapshots.

The show is now over. (Dan Baldwin is next…)

Enjoy the pics from the show as well as a the artist profile video

ART-PIE