Exhibition

Kristian Touborg
Beside Itself

Duration_ May 30–July 4, 2026
Opening_ Saturday, May 30, 4–7 PM

Installation Views / Works / Press Release

Gallery Vacancy is pleased to present Beside Itself, the first solo exhibition in China by Danish artist Kristian Touborg, on view from May 30 to July 4, 2026.

Kristian Touborg’s paintings often begin from fragments of everyday life: screen light, reflections on water, flowering plants, spider webs, car lights, and forms suspended between body and landscape. Rather than arranging these fragments into linear scenes, he layers and translates them through painting, staining, fabric, botanical matter, reflective surfaces, and stitching, allowing each image to move between observation and memory, surface and depth, material presence and visual apparition.

In Beside Itself, light and shadow become the central thread through which these movements unfold. They may appear as the cool glow of a screen, the afterlight of sunset, reflections on water, or the blue fluorescence emitted by microorganisms in waves at night. Through these different sources of light, Touborg gives visible form to time, perception, and material change.

Light also becomes Touborg’s way of giving form to time. Across Where Time Catches (2026), web-like lines spread across the canvas, connecting reflections, blue points of light, and fragments of images in the night. A string of blue reflective points near the center of the composition appears like “time eggs,” turning time from an abstract flow into a form that can be condensed, caught, and incubated. The spider web offers a metaphor for time: light and delicate in appearance, yet possessing a resilience beyond its visible fragility, able to catch and hold what passes through it. Brooding Time (2026) continues this intertwining of time and life, with spindle-shaped fluorescent blue forms on either side of the composition resembling eggs or larvae, as if time were slowly forming within the work.

In Between Two Lights (2026), Touborg places his inquiry into light within a scene that is both intimate and estranged. The figure is surrounded by the cold glow of a handheld screen, while candlelight and warm interior light enter from the left. The “two lights” of the title suggest not only two visible sources of illumination, but two kinds of space shaped by light: one framed by private attention within the electronic screen, the other still held in the room, the window, and memory. Digital light does not merely illuminate the figure; it acts almost like a boundary, gently separating the person from the surrounding space. Where It Disappears (2026) extends a related concern, as bodily intimacy is reorganized by the scale of the screen and the figure seems to enter an interior space made by digital light.

Botanical imagery also carries a more personal origin in this exhibition. Touborg’s mother is a botanist, and the influence of nature on the artist has shaped his use of botanical materials and forms. In the title work Beside Itself (2026), plant matter is preserved in acrylic and polymer, floating between rings of blue light, water reflections, and translucent canvas. The plant is not simply depicted; it becomes a trace of time left by natural material entering the painting. Bloom/Ruin (2026) places blooming and falling within the same image: a stem grows upward while petals descend; near the center, a fallen petal resembles a cluster of silk-like threads, echoing the web structure in Where Time Catches (2026). In the background, car lights and a distant sunset make the instant of sunset and vehicular movement another way for time to become visible.

The relationship between body and plant becomes a structural association in Spine/Stem (2026). One of the longest-developed works in the exhibition, the painting has undergone years of layering and staining, resulting in a texture distinct from the more reflection-based works in the show. Within the composition, inverted human contours seem to merge with plants and water. The title points to a duality: the spine supports the body, while the stem or root supports plant life; both refer to structures that sustain living forms.

In After It Sank (2026), the skeletal outline of a car emerges among cherry blossoms, branches, and rain-like traces of pigment, as if it were slowly being covered by water and time. The car, an industrial remnant, gradually recedes, while the blossoms above the water continue to open, placing fading and flowering within the same image. In the lower left corner of the canvas, a fragment of liquid material is sealed inside a vacuum plastic bag. Even as the canvas changes over time, the plastic may continue to remain. This detail reflects Touborg’s interest in the dual nature of materials: the same material or process can preserve and seal, while also pointing toward erosion, absorption, and long duration.

Throughout Beside Itself, Touborg returns to the double nature of natural and material processes: a spider web is light yet resilient; water can engulf and reflect; plants wither and generate life; time is invisible, yet leaves traces on things. Light and shadow likewise cannot be fully captured, but shift in color according to angle, reflective material, and the viewer’s position. By wrapping his frames in reflective fabric, Touborg lets the surrounding space and the viewer’s movement enter the work. In this way, his paintings hold image, material, time, and looking in a continual exchange, giving temporary yet concrete form to things caught between generation, transformation, and disappearance.

Kristian Touborg, born in Roskilde, Denmark in 1987, now lives and works in Copenhagen. He received an MA from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, in 2016, and received the Danish Arts Foundation working grant in 2017. Touborg’s practice bridges digital imagery and traditional painting techniques, integrating printed textiles, industrially treated materials, and dismantled canvases into layered, tactile supports. He develops multidimensional compositions that linger between abstraction and figuration, where spontaneous oil brushstrokes meet collaged layers. In today’s image-saturated culture, his approach sustains an analogue presence while reflecting on contemporary image ecologies. Touborg creates imagined archaeological artifacts from a speculative near future, in which personal narratives and dreamlike sensations subtly cohere.

Recent solo exhibitions include: Beside Itself, Gallery Vacancy, Shanghai, 2026; Kristian Touborg: Rippling Excieties, CARVALHO, New York, 2025; Fringes of Reflection, Golsa, Oslo, 2023; Dandelion, Newchild, Antwerp, 2023; A Collapse Ago, Kunsthal Kongegaarden, Korsør, 2022; Fluttering The Void, Berlinskej Model, Prague, 2022; Light Blue Noise, Lundgren Gallery, Palma de Mallorca, 2022. Group exhibitions include: Smittet af bacillen, HEART Herning Museum of Contemporary Art, Herning, 2025; Livsangst, Museum Jorn, Silkeborg, 2025; Phantasms, CARVALHO, New York, 2025; Hang Over Shanghai, Shanghai, 2025; Things the Tide Choose Not to Take, Gallery Vacancy at Art-o-rama, Marseille, 2025; Frieze No. 9 Cork Street, CARVALHO at Frieze No. 9 Cork Street, London, 2024; On Paper, Newchild, Antwerp, 2024; Phantasmagoria, LBF Contemporary, London, 2024; Merging Echoes, CARVALHO, New York, 2023; Trust In Mortals, Brigade Gallery, Copenhagen, 2022; Peripheries, Newchild, Antwerp, 2022; Soft, Metal, Factory — HEART Collection, HEART Herning Museum of Contemporary Art, Denmark, 2021. His work is included in the collections of Museum Jorn, Denmark; HEART Herning Museum of Contemporary Art, Herning; Randers Kunstmuseum, Randers; The Blake Byrne Collection, Paris and Los Angeles; Statens Kunstfond, Copenhagen; X Museum, Beijing. In 2025, Touborg was awarded the PÉBÉO Prize for Gallery Vacancy’s presentation at Art-o-rama.

---

---