The vibe is youthful, studiedly casual, reminiscent of the adolescent bedroom of an aspiring bohemian (I’m sure I surrounded myself with some of this stuff). On the floor lie bits of crochet, a joss stick, a number of handmade ceramic vessels, one of which has met a fate as an ashtray. Three plants – one alive, one dead, one on its last legs – complete the look. Though a vacuum cleaner, its cylinder covered with sheepskin, is the most sculptural element on display, it’s evident that Martin Erik Andersen isn’t really about discrete objects of the anthropomorphic kind.
He’s about the partial orchestration of scraps and fragments. Yet the Danish artist does more than defend a slackerish outpost of scatter art. Andersen comes across as a poet of low-level pleasures, his creative territory being the pause and the possibility of extended reverie. The arrangement includes a film, projected small, of nothing more than a camera panning over these bits and bobs, accompanied by a soundtrack of distorted accordion music. When the music stops you hear the same tune, this time at regular speed and pitch, which leads you to the rear gallery and another, similar gathering of things – the change in speed and pitch of the music seems to relate to the relatively taut accumulation of objects.
You either buy into this noodling with frequencies and registers or spin on your heel at its apparent navel-gazing. Done well, as it is here, I’m a sucker for such delicate, diversionary charms, so much so that Andersen’s stitched textile wall works – which many will regard as an equally noteworthy part of this show – didn’t detain me for long.