EXHIBITIONS

The art of copying

– paintings by Erwin Lauterbach and OttoPoulsen

Special exhibition with paintings in the field betweennaiveism and outsider art from April 29 to August 19, 2023

Erwin Lauterbach's paintings are detailed and it is as if amultitude of stories would be told if there were sound in these pictures. Bothin the choice of motifs, idiom, and colors, they speak to the viewer'simagination, and one can go on a long exploration in this pictorial world.


The paintings are shown together with selected works by the Danish outsider artist Otto Poulsen (1921-2006). Otto Poulsen's pictures have the naïve perspective and the primal power of outsider art - at oncewonderfully concrete and at the same time pure abstractions in patterns andcolours.

In his professional life as a chef, Erwin Lauterbach had the idea that "professionals steal and amateurs copy". For him asignificant difference, because a copy will always be bad than an original. Thetitle of this exhibition is "The art of copying". It is both areference to this thought and a homage to the artists who inspire us, both the professionals and the amateurs.


Anyone with an interest in food and gastronomy probably knows Erwin Lauterbach for his cookbooks and the ownership of the restaurants Saisonand Lumskebugten. But before his career as a chef, Erwin did paint. His workswere even exhibited in the Copenhagen art gallery Charlottenborg. Time passedand Erwin's art became gastronomy, the brushes and the canvas were put on the shelf. The now 74-year-old culinary icon sold his restaurant last year toretire. Instead, the interest and talent for art was awakened, and practicallynot a day goes by without it. A few months before the sale of Lumskebugten, the director of the GAIA Museum and Academy in Randers, Anna Noe Bovin, was a guestin the restaurant with her husband. Their visit quickly developed unexpectedlyinto a professional talk about art with Erwin.

"A couple of my previous paintings had been given spaceon the walls of the restaurant's toilets. In the restaurant itself, I had otherpeople's art hanging, while I had hidden my own art a little away. Anna could see something in my works and suggested that I do an exhibition at GAIA in Randers," says Erwin Lauterbach. He visited the GAIA Museum and Academy some time after, and from here the idea of an exhibition took shape.


Back in the 1970s, Erwin met the outsider artist Otto Poulsen,who is a wonderful figure in Danish art history. Otto painted narratives, justlike Erwin does. In other words, paintings with an embedded course of action.The difference between the two is, however, in the approach, where Otto as anoutsider artist painted the immediate, while Erwin thinks more about what actions take place in the subject. "I have followed Otto in his art career and have beenlooking forward to doing an exhibition at GAIA with both his and mypaintings," says Erwin Lauterbach.


In connection with the opening on 29 April, Erwin Lauterbachwas in charge of a lunch arrangement made in collaboration with

the employeesof GAIA's café

The first artists at GAIA

27. September -12. November 2022

The anniversary exhibition presents six of the first artists at GAIA Akademi, who continue to work at GAIA. It is Lis Jensen's with drawings of motifs that she imagines seeing from a plane. Lis has been involved since the very beginning in 2002.


Maiken Buchardt exhibits sculptures made of thread and yarn, which express a unique sense of color and free composition.


Maria Sloth Sørensen is exhibiting a series of five large paintings depicting the terrorist attack in New York on 9/11.


In addition, Pernille Riebling Hansen participates with expressive portraits in ink,


Jens Rosenkilde with collages with motifs of historical character and Claus Thomsen with sculptures, which bear witness to an artist who is also an inventor.


The exhibition is shown in GAIA Museum's special exhibition room.