Frederik Næblerød (b. 1988) bends over two large canvases lying flat on the floor, alongside five smaller canvases of various sizes. Næblerød moves from canvas to canvas, leaning over them, flinging paint directly from the bucket, using his hands and fingers. In the corner of the spacious studio, located in a former industrial building in Copenhagen’s Sydhavn, a ceramic kiln hums silently while the tones of a 1970s psychedelic rock track by Iranian musician Kourosh Yaghmaei (b. 1946) flow from the speakers, creating a vibrating soundscape of romantic Middle Eastern melancholy. It’s 11:45 PM, the year is 2022, and it’s Friday. Næblerød shifts his focus to two canvases, each measuring 240 x 200 centimeters. Together, they form a single large painting, lying on the floor as a partially painted surface. In just two days, a truck will turn the corner to the studio to transport the piece 1,200 kilometers through Denmark, Germany, and Poland to the Czech Republic, where it will be exhibited.

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Since Næblerød graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen in 2018, his career has developed at an explosive pace, and today he is among the most prominent artists in Denmark. His work and personality have been highlighted in the TV program Kunstnerkolonien (2020) and the reality documentary Ufortyndet (2021), which documented and staged his life and artistic endeavors. However, Næblerød's fame also stems from his presence on the social media platform Instagram, where he enriches his followers with videos and images that offer a mix of music, studio ambiance, long road trips, fast-paced socializing, decisive hands working with clay, buckets of paint, canvases, fine wine, and an inspiring flow that is frenetic, youthful, romantic, and dizzying. Together, these elements form an autobiographical narrative of an artist fueled by a rare energy possessed by only a few—an energy that could propel him to the stars or make him burn out in an instant.

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OUT OF THE STUDIO

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Frederik Næblerød has roots in the street art and graffiti scene, and although his choice of media today is relatively traditional—painting, watercolor, pencil, ink, clay, and bronze — he has incorporated the accessible visual language of street art into his expression. In recent years, he has transitioned from so-called action painting, using lacquer paint, to oil painting with brushes and fingers. Clay remains one of his favorite materials, but in the summer of 2024, Næblerød presented his first series of bronze sculptures at Alice Folker Gallery in Copenhagen. Like his clay sculptures, the bronze works are characterized by their punk, humorous, organic, and spontaneous qualities.
As with his paintings, there is something effortless, playful, and light about Næblerød’s work with clay. His art seems to emerge and flourish around him as naturally as breathing. It does not grow from schematic, well-thought-out structures, series, or themes but instead arises spontaneously, like pearls on a string, where his distinctive style serves as the common denominator rather than adherence to a particular trajectory or series to be explored. This spontaneity is a hallmark of his prolific nature. Despite being fully engaged with projects such as exhibitions at Horsens Kunstmuseum and Vejle Kunstmuseum in 2022, Gl. Holtegaard in North Zealand in 2023, and Skovgaard Museum in Viborg in 2024, he has also ventured beyond the art market and museums. Together with artist Casper Aguila Christoffersen (b. 1985), he has brought art into the real world, creating works that exist for their own sake and for the local community.

During their academy years from 2015 to 2016, the duo transformed an abandoned summer house on the beach at Korshage near Rørvig into a single large-scale artwork. This was followed by the farm project There Is a Farm in Vig, where from 2018 to 2020, they converted an abandoned rural property into a cohesive work of art. Most recently, the Places Like This project in 2024 saw them take over a defunct school in Odsherred, building a site-specific total installation with support from local institutions and businesses, which was later opened to the public.
A similar phenomenon can be seen in the international Cobra movement (1948–1952), whose artists, when they gathered at their so-called conferences, often completely decorated the spaces they used. The interior of artist Erik Nyholm’s (1911–1990) house in Hørbylunde near Silkeborg is a prime example of the results of such a conference. Another example is the Frederiksholm Cabin, or “The Architects’ Weekend Cabin,” in Bregnerød near Farum, which was built by and for students at the Royal Danish Academy of Architecture. In 1949, members of the Cobra movement spent a weekend there, leaving behind decorated walls and ceilings.

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Unlike figures such as Asger Jorn (1914–1973) and other Cobra artists, Næblerød does not work within a clearly defined group. However, his approach to art echoes the guiding principle of the Cobra movement: art is something that flows out of the studio, beyond museums and private collections, and into the spaces where life is lived, where it is worn and weathered by time.

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A WONDEROUS LANDSCAPE

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Back in the studio, Næblerød grabs a metal bucket filled with industrial lacquer paint. "I absolutely love this color," he says as he flings the paint across the canvas. The sand-yellow, purchased from a surplus batch of color samples at a hardware store, explodes like a punch against the blue. He sets the bucket down, leaving a ring of paint on the tiled floor, and spreads the thick, flowing layer of color toward the edges of the canvas. Recognizable shapes emerge: an arm, a foot, a shoe, an animal—only to dissolve again, transforming into new forms: a unicorn, a submarine, a wolf. Næblerød spits into a red blot, thinning the paint in the center. Looking up, he exclaims, "Look, it has an eye!" Slowly, the creature takes shape—a long-legged beast with curved claws, a black snout, and a red belly behind prominent ribs.

The Jewish painter Chaïm Soutine (1893–1943), part of the so-called School of Paris, created the painting Slaughtered Ox in 1925 as a paraphrase of Rembrandt's (1606–1669) world-renowned The Slaughtered Ox from 1655. Soutine worked with a palette that strikingly echoes Næblerød's paintings, but where Soutine’s slaughtered ox is stretched out against a shimmering blue drapery, the paint in Næblerød's work gathers around the animal like a tight, skin-like shroud. It distributes itself in chemical erosions of color, defining a wondrous landscape—a dead seabed or an astronomical phenomenon. The outer layers dry first, encapsulating pockets of wet paint that sometimes burst and flow into new details before solidifying.

The Irish-born painter Francis Bacon (1909–1992) may have been familiar with Soutine's painting when, in 1954, he painted Figure with Meat. Once again, the inspiration was Rembrandt’s masterful painting, which Bacon paraphrased and combined with Diego Velázquez’s (1599–1660) portrait of Pope Innocent X from 1650. Setting aside Bacon’s neo-Baroque, all-consuming, and terrifying darkness, there is once again a similar interplay of color between the red of the exposed flesh and the blue. Although dressed in a sacred ultramarine blue, Bacon’s priest appears profoundly diabolical. In a posture directed straight at the viewer, blood from the eviscerated, suspended ox drips down the priest’s face, while the animal’s rib cage forms the feathers of two majestic wings. Bacon’s bizarre angel is not only a commentary on the Catholic Church but also on the sometimes self-important solemnity of art itself.

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RAVENOUS DOGS AND APOCALYPTIC SUNS

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Frederik Næblerød props the two canvases upright and carries them to the studio’s gate, where he can view them from a distance. There, under the light spilling from the studio and in the icy October wind, the thin, dried film over the red blot that forms the creature’s eye bursts, letting the paint trickle down its cheek. Three days later, when the artwork reaches its exhibition destination at Telegraph Gallery in Olomouc, Czech Republic, another pocket of paint bursts near the bottom, just to the left of the painting’s center. The clumped mass slowly slides down the canvas before drying mere centimeters from the lower edge.

The creature’s tail lashes, creating a dynamic tension around the otherwise static figure, evoking associations with American Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock’s (1912–1956) Black over Yellow from 1950. In typical Pollock fashion, he flung paint in long streaks, forming a swirling chaos—a tornado of movement. Næblerød’s paintings share a kinship with Abstract Expressionism and its action painting ethos. In Næblerød’s world, there are no rules, only an open realm of possibilities within the natural constraints of the medium. His art also draws on spontaneous abstraction, surrealist automatism rooted in the subconscious, and the imaginative and naive qualities of artists associated with Cobra. Similarly, Dadaists and Surrealists, 30 years earlier, embraced the creativity of childhood as an ideal for anti-academic and anarchistic art, rejecting the intellectualisation of artistic expression.

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Næblerød’s figurations are likewise immediate and in harmony with the aesthetic seen in children’s art, yet they also conceal strange and often unsettling narratives and symbols. Ravenous dogs and naked women in chains. Bottles of alcohol and medicine. Pole dancing, palm trees, circus arenas, crosses, masks, and rainbows. Monstrous creatures tell stories of bodies in transformation, cultures in decay, all within a synthetic world of chemical colors and apocalyptic suns.

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The Italian artist Enrico Baj (1924–2003) painted his so-called Ultra Bodies in the 1950s: mutated beings in a barren and ruined post-nuclear world. The two suns often appearing side by side in Baj’s landscapes surrealistically signify the new Anthropocene worldview, where humanity has created its own bizarre, synthetic, and toxic apocalyptic ecology. Unlike Bacon’s demonic angel, Baj’s monsters are usually well-meaning and friendly, reaching out their arms as if they long for nothing more than to be embraced and loved. Næblerød’s monsters span the entire spectrum—some are kind, others grotesque; some smile with lipstick-covered mouths, while others devour with razor-sharp teeth.

Over the past year, as mentioned, Næblerød has moved away from action painting with synthetic paint and delved deeply into oil painting. His figures have become more defined and sculptural, and the colors now have a clear and tangible delineation. Oil painting offers new possibilities, and chance no longer plays the same decisive role in the final outcome. This shift demands more from his narratives. Næblerød is evolving and progressing, writing history as he moves forward in these pivotal years.

You can experience Frederik Næblerød's solo exhibition here at the museum from February 6, 2025, to July 27, 2025.

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^{Frederik Næblerød. Foto: Kavian Borhani}

^{Frederik Næblerød. Foto: Kavian Borhani}

FREDERIK NÆBLERØD ALL WALKS OF LIFE is published by Strandberg Publishing and is available at the museum or online for 149 DKK.