With deliberate touch points on the continuum between the first and last breath of life, the existential conditions of man is the general theme of Christian Guldager’s work. In his work, these issues are, primarily in paintings, illustrated in a figurative universe that reflects the darker sides of human existence such as death, anxiety, loneliness, power, vanity and identity. Technically, the figurative image sphere is prolonged through a deliberate dissolvement of the oil painting. By thinning out the paint and by washing off major parts of the motif from the canvas repeatedly, Guldager is addressing the memory decay of man, the subjective ambiguity of perception and the temporary nature of existence. The result is a figurative painting in which the motif gets slurred the closer you get to the canvas. However, the figuration is replaced by obvious marks from the process that cannot be covered by the thin layers of oil paint. What intuitively could be conceived as an easily definable scene of life, is being dissolved by the fragmented process in which fragments of the motif are often sampled from different sources of inspiration and therefore cannot be identified outside the framework of the piece. As the memory, the works of Guldager define a temporary narrative which is considerably differentiated from the details of the original ideas, sources of inspiration, and narratives.

Strongly inspired by psychological research, Guldager build bridges between his psychological and artistic competences. The works seek to challenge the common perception of the darker sides of life as being inconvenient. He claims for the right to address the subjective and doubtful consistency of life, memory and perception as a basic condition on which the presence of life can be anchored.