The exhibition is about everything and nothing. About not caring, while at the same time being indignant and about being in full control only to lose your grip the next moment. The exhibition is about moderation and dependence, about fear on the one hand and anger on the other. About fighting to the end and about giving up in advance. About cultivating the roots, while throwing the past overboard. About meaning everything to one person and meaning nothing to everyone else. About order and chaos - lies and manipulation. Whether it is true or false. About finding meaning in meaninglessness.
The exhibition showcases new gouache paintings on paper and stoneware ceramic sculptures. A repeated theme in many of Dalgaards' projects is the number of small elements that are merged to create a complex whole. Whether the partial elements consist of small blobs of colour, pieces of wood, or other fragments, the composition of all partial elements creates the whole of Dalgaard's works.
Drawings
Dalgaard's new drawings are made up of numerous brightly coloured dots that are repeated in an endless pattern that conveys a complex net of ideas. He has drawn inspiration from, among others, the earlier computer digitalization, systems codes and algorithms. The drawings are reminiscent of the early pixel graphics and algorithmic coding systems of encrypted information, which one can explore. Dalgaard bases his drawings on a many-year interest in patterns, geometry, electromagnetism and colour theory. It is also obvious to view the drawings in an ethnographic context. The rhythmic repetition in the dot patterns may be reminiscent of the kind of aesthetic found in non-Christian cultures. As, for example, in aboriginal art, where mythological images hold a social function, in the form of a collectively shared memory tool, that stores knowledge and information about people and their shared history.
Sculptures
Dalgaard's sculptures also draw inspiration from ethnography. He has always been interested in history and is fascinated by how cultures arose and later disappeared to make way for new civilizations, which then again had to perish, in favour of the new. He sees his sculptures as small installations and models for larger structures. The sculptures create different environments and function as backdrops for human activity. His often long and telling titles help push the stories in certain directions. The titles can be perceived as a kind of fictional diary notes, written by the fictional people whom one can imagine having built and lived in the fictional sculptures environments. Dalgaard summarizes his sculptural practice as follows: ‘If you imagined an anthropologist's first meeting with an undiscovered island community, then my sculptures are the anthropologist, the island and the community at the same’.