umbrella
west coast exhibitions

umbrella is very pleased to present the first large-scale solo exhibition of Paul Cunningham's food drawings in Denmark.

 

Traditionally, the sketch, the draft, is seen as pre-work for the artwork that can be created on its basis. In this sense, to sketch or draft means to be in search of an idea, to want to find something, to work something out. 

 

Paul Cunningham has had little or no visibility as a visual artist, but has been recognised exclusively for his culinary art. It is therefore not known that he turned to art before beginning his career as a chef and has never completely abandoned this aspect since. Rather, his artistic ambitions in the form of sketches, drawings and commentaries have become a permanent part of his work as a chef. In the traditional sense of sketching, the search for ideas and the pre-work, he adopts a visual perspective that enriches his dishes, recipes and the unique vision of his cuisine, making it the renowned establishment it is today. The eye eats with you.

 

The sketches, drawings and materials shown in the exhibition Paul Cunningham presents five drawn menus indicate how closely art and cooking are or can be linked. Our exhibition deliberately adopts the visual perspective: By taking a step back with Paul Cunningham, the exhibition enables a different approach, a different view of the process of cooking, eating and enjoyment.

 

To create the individual plates on his menus, Paul makes sketches of the food he is working with to give each plate a unique visual flavour. Everything can merge and branch out; connections can be made that you would never have thought of before. In this sense, his drawings are not only a good example of the creative process and its challenges, but also an expression of an artistically anarchic approach, a process that visualises and comments on ideas and shows both their emergence and their failure.

 

Paul Cunningham's sketches and drafts are no longer just pre-work and part of the creative cooking process, but can also be seen independently as drawings in their own right. The artist is a chef and vice versa.

 

 

 Paul Cunningham cooks from Denmark's wild west coast at Henne Kirkeby Kro. Paul is a chef and writer, illustrator and photographer. He was born in Essex, England in 1969. Educated and trained as a chef in various British restaurants and country house hotels. He moved for love to Korsør in Denmark in 1994. He worked at Søllerød Kro, where he received his first Michelin Star in 1997. Then he moved to Formel B, Coquus. He was co-owner of The Paul - Tivoli Garden in Copenhagen - and since 2012 head chef at Henne Kirkeby Kro. Paul received one star in the Michelin Guide Rouge in 2003-2011 at The Paul, and one star in 2016 and two stars in 2017-2023 at Henne Kirkeby Kro. In 2021, Henne Kirkeby Kro was awarded the Michelin Green Star. This is an annual award that recognises restaurants that are at the forefront of the industry when it comes to their sustainable practices. Paul is a four-time Danish modern style hot dog champion and author of eight cookery books.

Most recently, some of his drawings were displayed at the Maxus101 booth at Enter Art Fair, Copenhagen.

 

 

The exhibition is supported by Aage og Johanne Louis-Hansens Fond.

​

​

​