Missing the world

Gold, green, and rusty brown pile up across this large canvas like the face of a cliff glimpsed through heavy rain. Per Kirkeby, the Danish painter who made it, studied geology before turning to art, and that training runs all through the picture. Scratchy black lines suggest cracks splitting through rock, while the warm yellows seem lit from within, as if sunshine were striking a wall of stone. The result hovers somewhere between a landscape and pure abstraction, refusing to settle firmly into either.

Kirkeby liked to talk about how nature stacks itself up slowly over ages, and his method mirrored that idea. He layered paint on and scraped it back again and again until the surface took on a worn, almost mineral quality. Painted in 2000, "Missing the world" wears a wistful title that hints at loss, as though something precious were quietly drifting out of reach. He offers no particular place to identify, just a thicket of marks and shades to explore at your own pace. Sit with it a while and the surface seems to keep shifting, never quite holding still.