Dirk Larsen

Dirk Larsen studied BA Fine Art at Birmingham School of Art and in 1975 was awarded a Travelling Scholarship and an MA in Environmental Media from the Royal College of Art, London. He then worked with Tom Puckey as part of the performance art duo, Reindeer Werk, putting on performances in Europe, Canada and the USA from 1973 to 1981. Reindeer Werk moved to Amsterdam in 1978 and set up 'Behaviour' workshops with Joseph Beuys in Holland and Germany. Dirk Larsen taught at Cardiff College of Art from 1982 until 1985, and has been living and painting in Bristol, UK, ever since.
Dirk Larsen is one of the most extreme and disturbing artists working in Europe today. His pictures are comic and extraordinary configurations of reality in which men and women become deformed monsters, rabbits and teddy bears. This topsy-turvy, enigmatic, hard to comprehend reality, may look like an exercise in surrealism. In fact, the only thing that this artist's work has in common with surrealism is his capacity to fish with full hands from the world of the subconscious. Larsen actually fits in precisely with a new style of painting much in vogue in Italy and elsewhere, a style that uses metaphors and symbols from childhood and which throws an alarmed glance at the world in which we live."
Dirk Larsen is represented by Studio D'Arte Raffaelli (Trento), East West (London), and Strychnin Gallery (London, NYC & Berlin).