Iris Bendt-Hedal: 'Gentle Disruptions'

2 Jul-11 Jul 2026

PV 2 Jul 2026, 6-8pm

Overview

Born in 1986, Bendt-Hedal is a Danish painter whose seductive, playful, and oddly lyrical paintings invoke subtle yet charged tensions between the familiar and the unfamiliar.

At first glance, Bendt-Hedal’s compositions present the viewer with various points of recognition: gestures, colours, and what appear to be fragments of figures. The works are cohesive, but shirk easy answers. They appear grounded in some sort of lived (or imagined) experience, but also include emotional landscapes that veer into fantastical narratives imbued with wild colours and visual flair. When speaking about “figurative” art, we frequently talk about storytelling, but these paintings refuse simple categorization. If they aren’t quite figures in space, perhaps they’re figures in search of space. Characters looking for a narrative… This is only one of the so-called “gentle disruptions” from which the title takes its name.

The paintings seem to embrace fissures, dissonance, refusals. The viewer is drawn into an introspective exchange. The paintings become sites of reflection, echoing the complex ways in which we understand ourselves through abstract or referential imagery – do we see figures? Do certain colours lead us to feel a specific way? Is the artist trying to convey an idea or emotion? How does the title or the brushwork ask us to interpret the work in question?

Central to her artistic practice is a careful balance between intensity and restraint. Her use of colour and various motifs carries a direct, almost immediate impact, while remaining tempered by a sense of subtlety and play. This interplay resists overt answers, instead asking for a more reflective, sustained engagement. The viewer is (here’s the word again) gently held within the work’s atmosphere. These disruptions may be part of decoding its mystery; it’s darkly playful push and pull; its refusal to comply with whatever figurative or painterly rules we come to expect from a painting.

Bendt-Hedal’s work unfolds delicately, but with power and a riotous sense of confidence. Quietly unsettling but inviting and warm, where moments of familiarity are delicately disrupted, and perception is continuously renegotiated. We are thrilled to bring her works to our collectors and audience.

We invite you to join us for Bendt-Hedal’s opening and inaugural exhibition with BEERS London on Thursday, 2 July (6–8pm) at our Little Britain location in conjunction with our first solo exhibition from our inaugural Artist in Residence, artist Georgia Dymock.