PER LUNDE JORGENSEN & SEAN NOONAN

JULY 24TH - SEPTEMBER 25TH

Richeldis Fine Art’s Summer Exhibition presents Vestigios, a two‐person exhibition of new work by Danish artist Per Lunde Jørgensen (b. 1964, Copenhagen) and American painter Sean Noonan (b. 1986, Brooklyn, NY; based in Kingston, NY). Vestigios, meaning traces, remnants—speaks to the shared material sensitivity that underpins both practices: a commitment to what is found, weathered, or overlooked, and to the act of recomposing with clarity and restraint. In different but resonant ways, both artists draw from the language of textile and salvage—transforming found materials into surfaces of memory, structure, and meaning.

Per Lunde Jørgensen (b. 1964, Aarhus, Denmark; lives and works in Copenhagen and London) has developed a singular and quietly rigorous practice over more than three decades. A graduate of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (MFA), his work transforms everyday objects—used upholstery, furniture panels, textile remnants—into structured, pared‐back compositions. Materials are sourced from local classifieds and thrift—including seat covers and curtain fabrics—then dismantled, recut, and sewn into raw canvas, creating modular structures that move fluidly between painting and architectural object. These carefully constructed surfaces bring the memory of use into alignment with a disciplined formal logic composed of stitch, seam, and pattern—allowing an engaged viewer to “consume” the work, in the artist’s words, through repetition, calibration, and structural clarity.In his recent works, areas of heightened chromatic density introduce a boldness of form that recalls the compositional clarity of Ellsworth Kelly. Colour is not applied but embodied—flat, saturated fields are cut into form and allowed to hover with deliberate poise. Jørgensen’s silhouettes—rounded, asymmetrical, at once organic and precise—float against neutral grounds with calibrated spacing and rhythm. Their apparent simplicity belies a complex balancing act, in which surface, shape, and interval are resolved through intuition and control. The result is quietly declarative: an abstraction anchored in touch, weight, and a distilled visual logic.A highlight of Vestigios is the inclusion of Jørgensen’s Signature Works, a series of embroideries on canvas that enlarge the “trademark” gesticulations of successful Abstract Expressionists alongside the signatures of figures in power. By investigating the morphology of lines that have demonstrably shaped the world, the tapestries question authorship and authority. Executed in shiny white thread on a beige ground, they adopt a subtly feminine, discreetly luxurious appearance that contrasts with the more overtly masculine black‐on‐white originals. The restrained white‐on‐whiteness tempers bravura gesture, dismantling assertiveness and introducing productive ambiguity; read as a meta‐comment on artistic identity, these works probe the expectation that an artist’s output must be immediately recognisable in order to succeed. Jørgensen’s work is held in a number of significant public and private collections, including Fidelity Investments Corporate

Art Collection (Boston) and the Berkowitz Art Foundation (Miami). He has exhibited widely, with solo presentations in New York, Copenhagen, Kiel, and Venice, and has shown at the Statens Museum for Kunst (National Gallery of Denmark) in Copenhagen.

This exhibition marks the largest body of new work to date by the emerging American artist Sean Noonan, and offers a wonderful opportunity to collect from this remarkable and distinctive painter. Based in Kingston in New York’s Hudson Valley, Noonan builds his pictures directly on reclaimed boards and salvaged papers—materials often found nearby and embraced for their inherent history. Grain, knot, and warp guide the first marks; successive layers of oil, enamel, and graphite open pockets of light or deepen them in density. His dialogue is literally brush‐to‐board—a negotiation between gesture and given surface.Noonan’s paintings respond to intuitive impressions—gestures, rhythms, and visual fragments that surface through observation and recall. With a markedly present touch, his mark-making remains deliberately unfastened and free, summoning early, crude forms that carry weight, emotion, and personality. These forms resist direct reference yet feel rooted in a shared, archetypal visual memory. His motifs exist in a fluid state, anchored through methods and traditions of historical painting—echoing the way handwriting becomes unique through repeated use.There is a quiet seascape sensibility in Noonan’s work—his palette and compositions subtly evoke the elements of sea, sky, and stone. This affinity is also informed by Noonan’s passion for sailing, a practice that mirrors his studio approach—navigating changeable conditions, embracing chance, and responding to elemental forces with attention and restraint. In the exhibition, a folded 1956 sailcloth echoes these themes—a found object marked by weather and use, shown on a plinth. This resonance connects with the ethos of the St Ives modernists, where clarity and omission were guiding principles. As Ben Nicholson wrote in Circle (1937), “great painting strives for ‘clarity and the great art of omission,’” an ambition Noonan revisits through the tactile contingencies of weathered wood and elemental form.Each work is a small gem—intimate in scale, yet expansive in feeling. His sensibility draws from Abstract Expressionism and European modernism, yet remains firmly rooted in a contemporary, personal idiom. The individuality of each work is reinforced by Noonan’s use of evocative and poetic titles—such as King Ivo, Wire in Blue, Once a Place for Quiet, Orange Talisman, Last Week’s Neutrals Two, and More from the Old Ship—which act as tonal cues or fragments of thought, guiding interpretation without prescribing it. These titles suggest inner states, memory traces, and atmospheres of space and sound, gently anchoring abstraction in lived experience.

Noonan is a graduate of Pratt Institute and has exhibited nationally and internationally, with recent exhibitions at MARC STRAUS (New York), Devening Projects (Chicago), LKIF Gallery (Seoul), Resort (Baltimore), Galleri Kai (Copenhagen), Poker Flats (Williamstown), and SOHO Review (London). He is represented by Sears Peyton Gallery (New York) and Richeldis Fine Art (Spain/UK). Public collections include Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, New Paltz, as well as numerous private and institutional collections in the United States and Europe.