Thomas Kolding

“The Dane Thomas Kolding studied at the Danish School of Design 1988-93. Now the Hanoverian Galerie Holbein4 is arranging his first solo exhibition in Germany under the title “Escape the Nest”. The attempt to escape the nest and enter the world is Kolding’s artistic theme and also a biographical motive. At the center are female figures in white leotards and underwear, as if posing for training. Their movements seem choreographed. Sometimes they bend in the fetal position, and other times, with their heads thrown back and outstretched arms, they venture an opening towards the world and the partner, which remains a fragmentary hint. Thomas Kolding does not provide secure stability.
The impression of unprotectedness and danger to life is reinforced through the abstract color spaces, which are built up of bright red, orange, black and white horizontal lanes. Traces of drops soften the horizontal lines and draw vertical lines. Often the figures seem to disappear like shadow games behind the color slides, and then they are released again in a white nothing. Thomas Kolding has scratched the tool titles into the painting, “An End has a Start” sounds like one. There is a beginning in every parting.”

… “On the end wall, it is the visual artist Thomas Kolding who dominates with a very large work (Memories III 200×150 cm) flanked by a few smaller ones (Couple Vestfjords 100×100 cm and Remembrance 100×70 cm). Here is passion, where the figures of the present are presented in a cascade of violent movement, and who with reflections and strong brushstrokes make use of the white color that gathers in an orgy of, among other things, dramatic red shades. Yet these images also exude narrative poetry … ”