Edsberg's Biography
Born October 10, 1945 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Edsberg had his debut as a
painter in 1966 at The Association for National art, Charlottenborg,
Copenhagen. During the sixties, seventies and eighties Edsberg held
exhibitions in his homeland Denmark, throughout Scandinavia, Europe,
U.S.A., Mexico, Japan and Australia. His work is represented in numerous
private and public collections around the world.
In 1977 Professor Alexandre Cirici Pellicer, president of The
International Association of Art Critics said: "Soren Edsberg contributes
in a very personal way to contemporary art," and The Council of The Mirro
Foundation refers to Soren Edsberg as "a renewer of abstract art in
Europe."
In 1987 Soren Edsberg moved with his family to U.S.A. He joined the
faculty at Brigham Young University as an adjunct professor. In the
nineties Edsberg produced and directed a series of medical/educational
videos for hospitals, schools, universities and government agencies in
U.S.A., Canada, Mexico and the European Union. Among those acclaiming
Edsberg's educational productions are U.S. Senators Orrin G. Hatch, Edward
M. Kennedy, former U.S. secretary of education Terrell H. Bell, and former
assistant U.S. secretary for health James O. Mason who says that the video
series have made "a significant contribution to health education."
Edsberg shared his efforts during the last part of the nineties with the
Baby Video Library series, his photography, and
preparations for the Hope Galleries. His photography project brought him
to numerous National Parks taking thousands of photographs with a special
interest in nature's details and light. The first Hope Gallery opened in Provo, Utah in
2001, leading to additional locations in Park City, Utah and the main
location in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Although Edsberg has been a collector of art for nearly fifty years, he has
spent most of the last twelve years in Europe researching, tracking and
collecting art for the Hope Galleries and his ongoing private collection,
and resuming with his own works of art for future display.
Egemarke Manor Castle, Denmark
Edsberg's Residence before moving to the United States
Dining Room and Music Room
Library and Studio
Exhibit at the Grand Palais Paris France (1988)
A world premiere on a new composition in three movements.
Title "The Course of Life" inspired by Edsberg's latest works,
performed by Swedish concert pianist and composer Kjell-Ove Dahlman.
Edsberg Photography
by Virtus Schade (Prominent Danish Art Critic and Poet)
We are at the races in the moment when the horse's hooves leave the ground. The exciting homestretch before the winning post.
Or we are watching the waterlilies in the pond, admiring their beauty, fleeting and yet eternal.
In short we are in the middle of a time of fermentation, at the exact point when photography and the art of painting impressionism were introduced simultaneously. Some artists wanted to stop painting because they could no longer see any point in their existence as painters. But then there were other artists who, on the contrary, felt inspired by the capability of the camera to preserve a moment of density.
Degas' racing pictures, Monet's half blurred water-lily pictures - the paintings of those important impressionists would hardly have come to exist - at least not as they are now, had not the camera been there to act as an intermediary between nature and the artistic mind.
What would a man like Andy Warhol have been if Marilyn Monroe had refused to be photographed? At least not the Warhol that we know.
Quite many of the younger artists of our time preserve the life experience of the moment by means of a camera - and afterward they pass on their experience. Some perhaps by directly depicting the photograph in painting, except that now it is done with the artist's living brush.
Still, others use the photograph only as a memento, a stimulus, a starting point.
**[But then there are artists who use the photography as a photography. Let it stand alone and speak for itself.. This artist may be the brilliant press photographer. But he may also be the painter who respects the photographed segment of the world too much to change it.
Soren Edsberg, whose abstract paintings are based on thousands of exact sketches of nature belongs to this latter group. "The photography as a genre picture" is his starting point. An attempt to return to the "trite" idyll, which may not be so trite after all.]
"The Beautiful" - is that important?
Has it any meaning at all that forms have beauty, that tones have beauty, that colours have beauty? And is it the artist's task to depict the "beautiful?" Or is his essential function to participate in the general, every-day debate?
It is very obvious from Soren Edsberg's photos what his choice is. It is the beautiful that he wants to show forth. That is why he photographs the crafts in Gilleleje Harbour, that is why he photographs the early morning in the Copenhagen Deerpark - the trees, the deer, the light.
Discussing the idea of superficial idyll, well, to Soren Edsberg it is quite obvious that what he is photographing is the surface. The superficial beauty. But that in itself expresses an inner tension. Without the part of the iceberg that is under water certainly we shouldn't be able to see the part that is over the surface.
Let us be quite concrete and say: Soren Edsberg has come to realize that he cannot "photograph God. But then [he] can photograph His Creation."
Thus the quite elementary beauty enters his photographs. The brown leaves one Autumn day in the Deerpark. The rough beauty of the ship. The bridge across the Mill Creek. A herd of deer at rest. The nearly bursting buds on a Spring day. Anything that may express life.
Maybe the drunken tramps of the "Bowery" in New York might provide a good starting point for his photographs. Others have done that so well. Maybe the ragpickers of the dumping ground might provide a better basis for a brilliant photograph than the refined network of the trees as seen against a wintry sky.
However, that is not what he chose. We have got misery in this world, and it is important that some people depict it. In a journalistic, precise, and engaging manner.
Edsberg strives - as a photographer - to engage us in that beauty which otherwise (to quote Shelley) "doth pass by our dull senses." To commit us to what we have. He wants to show us that it is also possible to preach by means of .... a camera.
-VIRTUS SCHADE
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