August Thunbo lives and works in Copenhagen, He has studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Thunbo's expressive and colourful abstract paintings are saturated by many layers and figurations that together form a whole. The paintings are initially abstract, but on closer inspection, several recognizable everyday objects emerge, such as sandals, faucets, or lamps. Thunbo is occupied by colours and their culturally Westernized symbolic ability to communicate feelings and sensations. He uses colours to strengthen the narratives in the paintings and to create an emotional space that the viewer can enter.
Thunbo finds inspiration in waste and nature's degradation. He describes how he discovers figurations, shapes, and motifs everywhere on his many walks through the city. For example, in the form of a single shoe or some plastic waste that is slowly being broken down by nature and the elements degeneration. Thunbo incorporates forgotten and discarded everyday objects from urban life into his paintings. Their shapes and colours may inspire the abstractions or the choice of colours of a painting. Or Thunbo directly incorporates them in the painting, so something figurative arises in his otherwise abstract starting point. So that something that no longer has a useful purpose gets an opportunity to get a new life by being recreated in a new context and into a new world.
