JACK KABANGU (CD)
TILGIV MIG MINE SYNDER
OCTOBER 27 – NOVEMBER 25, 2023

Galleri Christoffer Egelund is proud to present our second solo show with Jack Kabangu: Tilgiv mig mine synder! (Forgive me my sins!). With Tilgiv mig mine synder! (Forgive me my sins!), Jack Kabangu wonders how his childhood self would judge the person he has become. You can experience Jack Kabangus newest works at Bredgade 75 in Copenhagen from the 27^th of October until the 25^th of November 2023.

While growing up, we rarely question the values that shape our upbringing. We soak up impressions like a sponge, creating our foundational beliefs based on the convictions of our parents, teachers and role models. But when life really starts, living up to their visions of what defines model human behavior isn’t always as easy as they make it sound.

With the exhibition Tilgiv mig mine synder! (Forgive me my sins!), Jack Kabangu looks back on his childhood self and the set of moral values that he believed in and wonders how his former self would judge the person that he has become. Having grown up in a Christian family, Kabangu’s childhood was filled with the culture surrounding religious practice and frequent visits to the local church and all of the anticipation, gospel music and strong communal bonds that came with them. The Church was a space filled with warmth, love and togetherness, but also a space of restrictions and rules governing what you could and should be and do. 

But when you are young and have an instinctual need to rebel and be a part of a community that gets up to some at times questionable things, following such rules to a T suddenly becomes less straight forward. This is exactly what Kabangu aims to depict with Tilgiv mig mine synder! (Forgive me my sins!): The inner balancing act that ensues when you want to be both the good kid, as one of the works of the exhibition is aptly called, and have the natural drive towards the risky and adventurous that characterizes most young people. With the boxing glove and the devil horns as recurring symbols that meet the viewer side by side with crosses and angels, and with titles like tvivl (doubt), bad decisions, forvirret (confused) and guardian angels, Tilgiv mig mine synder! (Forgive me my sins!) becomes a visual expression of the doubt and confusion that inevitably arise when you want to be what you have been taught is a good person and also want to take a risk every now and then and live a little while you’re still young.

But maybe the bad decisions are necessary – for if you do not try and break with what you’ve been taught to do, even if it causes a certain amount of guilt and the need to ask: “Forgive me my sins!”, you will never learn for yourself why the rules you were taught exist in the first place – and you will never get to test them and create your own moral compass based on your own experiences. And while bad decisions might get you into some sticky situations, your parents will always remain guardian angels, watching from afar, ready to lend a hand or a supportive word if necessary, however strict they may have seemed.

Jack Kabangu’s works are marked by vivid dynamism and thick brushstrokes that clearly show the gesture needed to make them. By combining classical artistic mediums like acrylic and oil with elements that create texture such as sand and paper, and by using oil sticks which allow for drawing with oil paint, Jack Kabangu creates paintings that exist not only in the flatness of the picture plane but also in 3D space. With the terrified face as one of his recurring subjects, Jack’s aim is to show, among other things, what it’s like to experience the terrors of war, as his family did when they lived in Congo, and how they stick with you long after you have escaped. Reminiscent of the visual style of Modernism with its rough brushstrokes and expressive subjects, Jack Kabangu’s art hearkens back to the art of great Modernists like Willem de Kooning and Danish Asger Jorn. But instead of borrowing the surface-level visual style of African and Oceanic art, as the Modernists did, Jack Kabangu utilizes the expressiveness of Modernism to express some of what the world looks like seen from an African perspective. Inspired by hip hop culture, high fashion and the colors 90s toys, he creates a unique visual style that exists at the intersection of many different cultural spheres and shows the multitude of coexisting aesthetics and ideologies that characterize our age – an age of the Internet, where the world’s cultural bounty is but a click away.

Jack Kabangu was born in Zambia in 1996 but holds Congolese citizenship. His family is originally from Congo but was forced to flee the country, even though his father is a doctor and university professor, due to the several brutal civil wars that ravaged Congo during the years 1996-2003 due to waves of refugees from the neighboring country Rwanda. Even though the wars ended officially 20 years ago, Congo is still plagued by armed conflicts. In 2005, Jack and his family moved to Holstebro in Jutland, Denmark, where he and his siblings grew up. Jack is a trained disability care worker, but he drew and painted his entire life. He had his big break as an international artist in 2021 after having posted his works on Instagram. He has exhibited his work at galleries in London, Hong Kong, Tokyo – and here at Galleri Christoffer Egelund in Copenhagen. He is featured in the current exhibition, Africa Supernova, at Kunsthal KAdE in Amersfoort, the Netherlands and has several other museum exhibitions in the works. You can learn more about Jack in the book Jack Kabangu which we publish here at the gallery in collaboration with Jack on the occasion of his second solo exhibition at the gallery.    

Join us at the exhibition opening at Bredgade 75 on the 27^th of October 2023 from 16:00 to 19:00 and meet the artist and listen to author, lecturer and art writer Trine Ross’ opening speech. For further information and sales requests, please contact the gallery at: hello@christofferegelund.dk or at +45 33 93 92 00. Visit us at Bredgade 75, DK-1260 Copenhagen K, Denmark. Opening hours: Wednesday-Friday 15:00-18:00, Saturday 12:00-16:00, or by appointment.