Door Phone: “Who?! – shit, that’s right … come in, come in.”

MORTENSEN: “Coffee!”

M: “My Work is kind of a salute to the misfits of the world.”

M: “I feel like a misfit on the Danish art scene myself; there is a certain ‘jargon’ and code of conduct that I don’t really fit into.”

M: “Guess you could describe my work as low-brow art, if you’re into categories.

But in Denmark low-brow doesn’t really exist as a mainstream genre …

I don’t think they qualify as ‘illustrations’, I mean, illustrations illustrate something: a storyline or some sort of temporal process, whereas what I do are singular pieces, so it falls between categories

– a misfit in the true sense of the word.”

M: “It was like that in school as well actually: if you don’t fit in you end up with all the other misfits

and that’s actually pretty cool

– then you get to make up your own rules within the various groups of oddballs.”

M: “It’s not like I was a criminal or anything like that. I just doodled and listened to heavy metal instead of playing soccer – instant outcast.”

M: “Nowadays you have various diagnoses for that kind of behaviour like Asperger, ADD and crap like that – it’s all just an excuse to say ‘he’s not like us’.”

M: “I don’t have a clear intent for each and every drawing. But, hey, I hope the lonely and unadapted can see something in the stuff I do – I mean the best thing for a comedian must be if someone to actually laughed them selves to death.”

STANKOVIC: “Clouds, mountains, sun and snow. Folk art and folk traditions. Stave churches. John Bauer. Shelter I. Shirley Collins. Symbolism and psychedelia.”

S: “It inspires me to create alternative worlds, to invoke fantasies and stories. I’m interested in why something that has been fundamental for cultures through the ages, suddenly looses it´s meaning and is forgotten with modernization.

Even though mythology has lost connection to people’s beliefs in our part of the world, I think there is still a vibration left, like an echo of a long forgotten memory, and maybe I’m trying to catch that vibe in my work.”

S: “Black Metal and romantic painting. The teenager possessed by music and idolatry. Perhaps lost and disconnected from nature, society and family.

The Empty Head series has a similarity to the faceless figures in the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich, who turn their backs to the viewer, contemplating the great landscapes.

But in my paintings there is nothing to contemplate on, there is no landscape, no nature. Only some patches and band logos stitched on the guys jackets.”

S: “Probably a lot, though a bit ambiguous. My Swedish background has (probably) contributed with a frustration against modernity and rationality while my Serbian background has created a nostalgic and romantic view of peasant life. So the outcome in my work is a kind of romantic-melancholic psychedelic post-folklore.

I think it’s exciting to find the same symbols and imagery in folk art all around Europe and even around the world. For me it is more thrilling to think of the mystery of images and the mystery of the human mind than of nations and nationality.”

MOHS: I am closing the gallery because I have a burning desire to concentrate on my own art practice. It has always been secondary to the gallery, and I really want to see how it will develop if I’m able to give my full attention.

M: I started MOHS exhibit because I need a change in my life. I visited the art fair FIAC in Paris and in the wake of that I bailed on my studies and decided I wanted work with contemporary art.

The initial focus was illustration and prints, but it quickly widened its scope, still with the love of detail in the craftsmanship particular to the world of illustration.

M: “MOHS exhibit has been part of the Danish scene for 7,5 years. For many artists MOHS was the gallery offering their first solo exhibition.

Besides I think MOHS has contributed a fair amount to the ‘food chain’ when it comes to visitors; we’ve had quite a few guests through who don’t normally pass through gallery doors: young people who were presented with something that actually spoke to them

– that’s huge, I think.