Omegn

Galleri Brandstrup is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Ole Messel, titled “OMEGN” opening Thursday September 10, 2026, at 6pm.

In this new body of work, Messel continues his exploration of painting as a process of perception, accumulation, and change. Taking everyday observations and his immediate surroundings as points of departure, he develops paintings in which impressions of landscape, light, architecture, and material conditions are gradually transformed through the painting process.

Messel’s works move between figuration and abstraction. Forms appear momentarily recognisable before dissolving or entering into new relationships as the eye moves across the surface. Rather than constructing fixed images, he allows the paintings to remain open, building them through successive layers in which earlier gestures may be obscured, altered, or brought back into view.

Working with egg tempera, acrylic, oil, and oil stick, Messel approaches the surface with varying degrees of speed and precision. Light falling across a canvas, something seen or photographed, a remembered form, or an unexpected physical condition in the studio may all enter the work and redirect it. The paintings develop through an exchange between the artist, the material, and the world around him rather than according to a predetermined composition.

At a time when images are increasingly expected to be absorbed and understood immediately, Messel is interested in slowing down the process of perception. His paintings resist a single reading and invite the viewer to remain with what is unresolved, allowing forms, colours, and spatial relationships to reveal themselves gradually through sustained attention.

Underlying the works is an interest in the moment before something becomes fully defined: the transition between colour and form, recognition and uncertainty, the sensed and the understood. A shape may suggest a landscape, an object, or a fragment of architecture without settling entirely into any of them.

Through this open and tactile approach, Messel treats painting not simply as a means of representing the visible world, but as a way of encountering it. Each work becomes a record of exchanges between observation, memory, material, and touch.

Ole Messel was born in Sarpsborg in 1986 and lives and works on the Danish island of Falster. He graduated from the Art Academy in Bergen in 2013. In 2024, he presented the solo exhibition For hånden at Van Etten in Oslo, featuring works developed during and following a working residency at Per Kirkeby’s former studio Haabet on Læsø, Denmark.