Gether
Contemporary

Projects & Collaborations

2024

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Sif Itona Westerberg Review by Annette LePique in SixtyInchesFromTheCenter

Love is an absence. A mirror. An unrepeatable and uncontrollable urge. Writer Annette LePique attempts to map the shape of this bewitching experience in her review of Sif Itona Westerberg’s “Twin Flame, Double Ruin.”

What follows is an attempt to capture the sensation of Sif Itona Westerberg’s “Twin Flame, Double Ruin”, up at the Driehaus Museum. Soulmates, Twin Flames, are meant to mirror one another, to perform for one another. Each reflects the other’s lack, the other’s failures, the other’s virtues. To have someone look upon you with knowledge and desire, to see yourself in them, is frightening. For what am I, if you’ve made your home within me? Buried under sinew, breathing softly beneath the blood. Yet it is this porousness, the alignment of body and breath, this secret language, that has always been and will forever be deeply, darkly, desperately wanted.

The below fragments should be read as fairy tales. Like Westerberg’s ruins they’re remains and incantations, remnants of a past language between you and I. Decipher this Rosetta Stone. This is a performance just for you.

Smoke curls, curtains part, and stage lights glimmer.

Let’s begin.

Once upon a time there were two lovers cursed.

In Dante’s “Inferno” the second circle of hell is reserved for those who were overtaken by passion in life, ruled by lust. Minos of Crete, the judge of hell, will know you. You are Francesca, you are Guinevere. It began as a kiss, only a kiss, but your surrender was swift, imminent. Paolo, the one you thought was yours, no longer meets your gaze. The ground is not still here. Hot and dry, it’s hard to see, hard to forget. The planes of his face live under the lace of your eyes. Ravenna was cool in the summer. You don’t miss it. You regret nothing.

Once upon a time you held a dagger that cried silver tears.

In Ascendance (2023) a polished bronze figure shines like gold. She reclines with one arm resting on her pelvis, fingers curled in the hollow where the thigh meets the body. The other arm raises her torso as Fermacell melts into a single curved line. Her hair licks the air like a compact flame, while one the left leg blooms into ecstatic curls. Rising, becoming, is marked by the loss of boundaries. Fingers and toes meet the sky like Medusa’s snakes, something more and less than human. Westerberg’s figure belongs to the lineage of Archaic kore, with her ambivalent smile and naturalistic features. Ruins are commonplace in Westerberg’s language, both because of her interest in ancient statutory and myth, but also the ruin that can be the outcome of love. The secrets shared just between two, the memories and language that take on a life of their own, ancient rites and mysteries that remain vibrating in place.

Once upon a time a little gold key began to bleed.

In 1945 poet Elizabeth Smart wrote By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, a memoir in prose that told the story of her eighteen year affair with the poet George Barker. Smart first encountered Barker’s poetry at a bookseller’s on Charing Cross Road in London. This is when she fell in love: through his words she knew him, through his words she saw him, loved him. The couple had four children while Barker remained married to another person. During a rendezvous in the American southwest, the couple was stopped by the FBI at a border between California and Arizona. Due to wartime fears of spying, the FBI cracked down on travelers’ papers. While Barker’s were in order, Smart was arrested at that time and charged with the intent to commit fornication. He left her, but she always stayed; a dynamic that would define the contours of their affair till its very end.

Once upon a time you drowned in a rain of rose petals.

A gasp smells saline, something wet and rotten around its edges. A gasp is a monument, like a wave, for a moment there is nothing between the body and that wet needle shoved through the throat like a rocket. Gasps are borne of shock, surprise, pleasure, disgust; a visceral reaction that cannot be controlled. Gasps happen. A true gasp cannot be rehearsed, cannot be pantomimed. Desire and the gasp share an architecture, a wildness, an empty space where anything could happen next.

Nymphs Gasping (2021) rests on the floor as the faces of the two nymphs arch upward, their mouths open, their throats filled, a sharp intake of air. Can you hear the soft sound of breath? Their hair streams behind them in the undulating lines of Westerberg’s concrete. A wave crests between the two figures, its foam caressing the sliver of space between their faces, it almost touches their open lips. Nymphs, Nereids, were children of the Aegean, the beauty of the water. The titular gasp, that spontaneous wonder, then is borne of beauty, of belonging, of coming face to face with yourself in another form, of seeing the vastness, depth, and unknown reflected back to you.

Westerberg coaxes such delicacy from stone; her lines soft, form changeable. A gasp never happens twice.

Once upon a time a mechanical woman began to dance.

In 1972, Angela Carter’s The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr. Hoffman was released as The War of Dreams in the United States.

Your name is Desiderio. You are the hero of the Great War because you are special: illusion does not touch you. Illusion is the enemy, it causes chaos. You are a son of order. Heritage is a saving grace: for you the walls do not shift, the shadows remain in their place. The air though is always fetid, thick with the dreams that come to you at night. She always comes when the last light is snuffed. Black swan gliding closer, creeping on glass. She is the enemy’s daughter, his prized mirror. Is she real? Fantasy can never be trusted, for who is its author? Is it her? Is it you? Who do you become in the glittering sphere of her eyes? Transformation was always painful, you were not meant to bend. People have lost their minds for less. You seem to disappear each time she leaves. Remember, “I desire therefore I exist”. Yet, it was desire that drove the world mad. Why couldn’t you trust the fantasy? You could have been happy. Did you have to kill her? Medals always weigh heavy on the chest. You regret everything. Even now.

Once upon a time your brother became a nightingale.

The story of the Heliades begins with the story of their father the Sun, Helios. The Heliades were the seven daughters of Helios and an ocean nymph. Each day Helios drove his chariot through the sky. Light follows fathers in this world. Their brother, Phaethon, wanted that light more than anything. To feel the heat, the authority of fathers. To be listened to, to be seen. Sisters see. Myth has it that the Heliades readied their father’s chariot so their brother, just once, could lead the light. He fell a long way, the outlines of the father are not easy to wear. The sisters saw him fall and wept. Their tears flowed on the banks of a river, their limbs curved and hardened into the branches of poplar trees.

Westerberg allows negative space to play against the weight of her aerated concrete in The Heliades Turned into Poplar Trees (2021). Two figures grasp in pain, breasts bared, leaves jut from their temples like constellations of the damned. These poplar crowns expand beyond the confine of the scene, their movement makes you ache like a snap of bone; transformation is never painless, skin breaks and bruises, you remember how delicate the body can be. Each holds the other. Material allows for Westerberg to play with form and referent: the shards of story bring to mind columns and amphitheaters, the frescos of long ago temples.

Once upon a time you looked into a pool of velvet and saw another face return your gaze.

There is an image in The Harlem Book of the Dead of a young woman nestled in clouds of white satin, embroidered with buds and verdant like spring. The year is 1926. A line of posies adorns her brow like a May Day diadem. She is young, too young to be so still, the lace of her gloves unmoving. The girl’s funeral was the inspiration for Toni Morrison’s Jazz, the story of another missing girl, the beautiful and free Dorcas, the object of love and obsession for her middle aged lover and murderer. This is a story of crime and a grand love, both formed by a girl-shaped hole at their very center. For the majority of the book we hear from the affair’s survivors: Dorcas’ friends, the murderer, and his wife. We learn why the murderer pulled his trigger. That reality and fantasy could never align for him, that Dorcas would remain free. She would not be the one in his house, in his kitchen, in his bed. There was a quality of Dorcas that was yet to be written. He wanted to be her author.

This is not how the story goes.

Morrison ensures it is Dorcas who ends her story, that she is and has the final word. Dorcas tells of how she felt the first time she was with her lover, how she was transformed by love’s gaze. It was light and warm, like violet petals caught aloft. In the book’s final lines Dorcas asks her lover, and the reader:

“Look where your hands are. Now.”

Once upon a time the moon began to speak and love hung heavy in your mouth.

In an untitled series of ink sketches, bodies merge into animals. Ears and horns lengthen, tails whip as teeth are bared. Nude figures dance and leap in lithe lines as creatures, some reminiscent of the centaur or the many-headed Cerberus, weave between these spinning human legs. There is a turn to the uncanny within each of these vignettes, the movement alive in Westerberg’s hand, as we can recognize something in each animal’s face. There’s a humanity, an individuality, to each creature. There’s not much distance, if any, between the human and animal. This closeness, this intimacy, is a quality that the show itself is well aware of: desire connects us, it can turn a saint to a beast. This isn’t a bad thing. If anything, this is a comforting lesson, one kin to that of the Rose from the Little Prince. Yes, we may lose our heads, howl at the moon like never before, and luxuriate in the excesses, but only when that lightning bolt hits. That electricity, straight to heart, the opening that allows us to see clearly for the first time, that’s what connects us.

Once upon a time you became the wolf at the door.

“Let me in”. You scream it every night. You were selfish in life, spoiled and rotten, but he liked your cruelty. The moors of the Brontes’ were a cruel place. You two lay in the heath like it was a bed, blessed and holy. Beholden to the confines of your skin and class, you turned away from his unknown fortunes and future, to a taffy colored cage smelling of silks and closed doors. You tried to explain, once, how you felt; love always seemed inconsequential when faced with the immensity of your feeling. For you and him were one and the same, souls two halves of a whole. Love failed when you looked at him, for you were looking at yourself. Yet, you two were cursed by distance. He heard nothing but love’s insufficiency, its lack. For the rest of your lives you see only pain in one another’s eyes, two wolves perched to devour. You both missed so much. Regret seems insufficient.

Once upon a time love became a blessing, an impossibility, a flash in the pan, a wayward glance, a firework enclosed in your fingertips, molasses on the vine, death behind the eyes, a secret diary, a double life, an honest day’s work, panting breath, the best thing, the worst thing, a message from the future, a scream that broke the day like metal.

Aquatic tendrils bend away from the other in agony, a split begins in the color of their stems. Rendered in concrete, Twin Flame (2024) is intimate in scale, similar in size to the Stations of the Cross in Catholic church or an even older rite, now faded and peeling on a palace wall. The piece could be a plant, a flower, something natural and untamed. There is only this secret, teeming mass. The lines are lithe, the scene quieted by Westerberg’s material. You must look closely to see the hair of a flame, a burning heart wild with heat. Westerberg’s stone heart writhes under the illumination of a single light.

Look closer, what do you see?

Do you recognize it?

Inside this burning heart is a mirror.

Do you feel your absence, your presence, at the center of this story?

I use these stories to write around you, write for you, and keep you locked tight in your crypt. Yet, when I write, you are here, and I am in your bed. Perhaps here is the heart of Westerberg’s show. It’s the dark, soft secret places where you come alive, where the hands that you know better than your own find you once again.


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Sif itona westerberg: Opening at Driehaus Mauseum, Chicago

We are exceptionally proud to present Sif Itona Westerberg's first museum solo exhibition in the USA, Twinflame, Double Ruin, opening on February 16 at the Driehaus Museum in Chicago.

The exhibition is curated by Stephanie Cristello and constitutes the fourth edition of the Driehaus Museum's contemporary art series, "A Tale of Today," where selected contemporary artists from both domestic and international scenes are invited to engage in a dialogue with the museum's richly ornamented interior and cultural-historical collection. The exhibition will showcase both new and older works by Westerberg, all of which unite ideals of creation and metamorphosis with the concept of 'ruin,' carrying meanings such as "catastrophe" or "remnants of classical artifacts."

Twinflame, Double Ruin draws inspiration from the ancient Greek myth of soulmates – a single body divided into two parts and condemned to forever seek its reflection. The exhibition title borrows its terminology from modern psychological concepts of interpersonal connection, where 'twin flame' is often used to describe precisely the connection resembling that in the mythological tale of soulmates.

Through a sculptural visual language particularly interested in hybrid forms, Westerberg transforms ordinary industrial materials such as aerated concrete into delicate, sensitive surfaces, engraved with retellings of ancient myths. By using materials to explore technological progress and the detachment that replaced myths at the beginning of modern society, Westerberg's work provides a deeper understanding of the Driehaus Museum's Nickerson Mansion and the cultural and social ideals from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century.

Westerberg's works can be experienced in the galleries on the second floor of the Driehaus Museum, including a new site-specific glass installation in Maher Gallery. The exhibition also extends to a gallery featuring works from the museum's permanent collection that respond to themes in Westerberg's work.


The exhibition is on view until April 14 2024

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Rune Bosse: Opening at Kunstmuseet i Tønder

We are proud to invite you to the opening of Rune Bosse's solo exhibition Circularis at The Art Museum In Tønder. The exhibition opens on Saturday, February 10th, with an opening starting at 2:00 PM.

About the exhibition:
Circularis is the culmination of two of Bosse's largest and most extensive projects to date - the 'Urpflanze' series (2019-2023), recently acquired and added to the museum's permanent collection, and 'Efter Ild' (2023-2024), a further development of his critically acclaimed exhibition of the same name, which premiered at GL STRAND last year.

In the 'Urpflanze' series, Bosse has collected stems, flowers, and roots from various plant species over the course of a year and carefully assembled them into new constellations, inspired by Goethe's "ur-plant phenomenon" - the idea of the "mother of all plants" serving as proof that all species share a common primordial form. Through the reinterpretation of this phenomenon in the series, Bosse introduces a captivating and speculative construction, highlighting the importance of remembering and experiencing the interconnectedness of everything.

In the museum's atrium, Bosse has created an impressive total installation that mimics the aftermath of a massive forest fire, based on his extensive work with fire as a "regenerative force." In this landscape or "remnants," he has also erected six monolithic pillars of burnt wood, reaching 6 meters towards the ceiling. These serve both as a dramatic manifestation and a poetic staging of the forest fire as a powerful phenomenon and of fire as an elemental force, central to the circularity of life.

Rune Bosse (b. 1987, Denmark) is a graduate of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, supplemented with studies at Olafur Eliasson's experimental art school, the Institut für Raumexperimente in Berlin, and training as a forest and nature technician.

'Circularis' can be experienced at the Art Museum in Tønder until May 20, 2024.

2023

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LU YANG: MIDNIGHT MOMENTS AT TIMES SQUARE

As a part of Times Square Art's project Midnight Moments, Lu Yang takes over Times Square with a post-human dance party, reborn as elaborately outfitted and eerily lifelike avatars in DOKU: Digital Reincarnation.

You can experience Lu Yangs immersive billboard take over at Times square, NYC every night in December from 23:57 - 24:00

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CHRISTINE OVERVAD ON HER UPCOMMING SOLO EXHIBITION

Friday November 17 we will open Christine Overvad Hansen's third solo exhibition in the gallery. Working with the upcoming exhibition, Christine Overvad Hansen has, among other things, explored tufting as a new technique and material investigation in her practice. Christine explains this as follows:

"Tufting, also known as the ryatechnique, is, in short, a technique for creating pile (upright free yarn ends) on textiles and comes in several variations, such as rya weaving, used to make floor or wall rugs, and rya sewing, perhaps best known from hobby works from the 1960s and 1970s. In recent years, the rya technique has experienced a revival, and it seems that, under the alias of tufting, it is shedding the last lingering prejudices of the 60s and 70s.

I have had the opportunity to work with rya weaving in the tufting workshop during two stays at the State Workshops for Art in 2022 and 2023. Both stays, in addition to generating a series of works and work components, have been part of an extended artistic research process, in which I have explored the potential of tufting in relation to my sculptural practice in general. My interest in trying my hand at tufting originally arose from a desire to develop and expand the more textile-based part of my practice, which at that time primarily ranged from small constructed textile works to work elements such as veils and underlays made of textile, leather, or wool. I quickly realized that the tufting process contains an incredible number of variables that can be adjusted in relation to each other, and even the smallest adjustments can result in significant changes in the final expression. During my first stay at the State Workshops for Art in 2022, I experimented with the effect of not only different thread colors, fibers, and combinations but also the tufting gun's movement patterns and when in the process any contours and details are added. During my most recent stay in the tufting workshop, I was able to build on my previous research and work with a range of shaping techniques that allow me to work sculpturally with the tufted works from the front. This has resulted in a series of tufted works and work components that, in various ways, flirt with the sculptural space.

With tufting, I have found a new and experimental creative space that I will continue to explore in the future, and I look forward to opening the doors to 'Sleepers,' which will be the first comprehensive presentation of this new type of work in my practice."

We look forward to welcoming you to the opening on November 17th from 5:00 PM to 8:00 PM.

The exhibition is supported by the Danish Arts Foundation and the State Workshops for Art.

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Rune Bosse Upcoming solo exhibition at Kunsthal Gl. Strand

We are proud to announce that Rune Bosse is opening a solo exhibition at Kunsthal Gl. Strand in September.

In After Fire, visual artist Rune Bosse explores the transformative power of fire: how, on the one hand, fire appears immensely destructive and, at the same time, the fire can be necessary for the tree to restart its life cycle. In an installation on GL STRAND’s third floor, the audience will meet an artificial landscape of apparently dead trees spreading across a charcoal floor. However, during the exhibition period, the trees will start to blossom.

The exhibition is a poetic adaptation of a phenomenon that seems increasingly relevant after the summer’s way too many forrest fires. Rune Bosse is interested in how we as humans relate to nature, and by simply moving landscapes around and creating new frameworks for nature, he invites the audience to ponder the course of nature themselves.

The exhibition opens November 4th 2023 and is on view until January 14 2024

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GETHER CONTEMPORARY X CATHRINE BRANDT - BLURRING THE LINES

Gether Contemporary glæder sig over at kunne åbne udstillingsprojektet Blurring The Lines i samarbejde med Cathrine Brandt på Brandt Brød i Silkeborg fredag d. 6. oktober. Med værker af Sif Itona Westerberg, Asger Dybvad Larsen, Christine Overvad Hansen og Amalie Jakobsen, rykker kunsten ind i Cathrine Brandts projektspace, hvor værker vil blive udstillet frem til d. 5. december. Udstillingens titel Blurring The Lines rammer præcist grundlaget for samarbejdet ind, nemlig et forsøg på at bryde skillelinier ned, og at lade ideer og rum flyde sammen for gensidigt at skabte nye muligheder og sammenhænge.

I forbindelse med den kommende udstilling har vi spurgt Cathrine Brandt ind til hendes rejse med Brandt Brød og særligt hendes forhold til den kunst der har fået en central plads i projektet:

I har netop åbnet Brandt Brød i Silkeborg med en markant kunstnerisk profil med udgangspunkt i den danske minimalkunstner Albert Mertz farveunivers i rød og blå. Kan du fortælle om din rejse og baggrund for projektet?

Min nysgerrighed for bagværk og kemien bag opstod i min studietid. Siden har jeg arbejdet med min passion. Jeg har blandt andet udgivet bøger i eget forlag, udviklet redskaber og produkter, startet webshops og meget, meget mere. For et par år siden syntes jeg, at tiden var moden til at få mit eget fysiske sted, hvor jeg på en mere direkte måde kunne bringe sanserne i spil hos de skønne mennesker, der gennem mange år har været engageret i mit univers. Min interesse for Albert Mertz blev vakt for nogle år siden, og jeg holder meget af hans værker. Der hænger flere hjemme hos os selv. Da jeg skulle i gang med indretning og design i Brandt Brød startede vi processen med at se på udtrykket på en sekundær genstand. Det kan være et godt sted at starte i forhold til en stram designmanual, der skal kunne rumme fysiske og digitale udtryk. Her faldt jeg hurtigt for skitserne med hvid, blå og rød. Vi hoppede ud af den konkrete proces og kom frem til en simpel designmanual, der endte med at bestå af to fonte og to legoklodser fra børneværelset. Og så hang Mertz på den hvide væg i min stue – og så opstod idéen om at bringe Mertz ind som det bærende element i indretningen. Det giver god mening for mig. Jeg er mest kendt for surdej, og det består blot af mel, vand, lidt salt og tid. Men ligesom med Mertz med rød og blå er det ofte de mest simple elementer, der rummer muligheden for at skabe noget fantastisk. Mange af mine gæster ved måske ikke hvem Mertz er, men jeg er sikker på, at de kan mærke, at jeg har indrettet Brandt Brød med en intention og en lyst til at gennemføre tanken helt ned i de mindste detaljer. Og det vækker nysgerrighed, der bliver til spørgsmål og dialog.

Ved siden af dit bageri har du åbnet et projektrum, som skal give plads til en række forskellige samarbejder og events. Den første udstilling der indvier rummet er udstillingen ‘Blurring The Lines’ som er blevet til i samarbejde med Gether Contemporary. Kan du fortælle lidt om din vision for space’et og hvordan du ser mulighederne for at samarbejde i et gensidigt frugtbart rum med plads til kunst og kreativitet?

Først og fremmest er det et rum, der skal kunne bruges til noget. Det praktiske behov er at kunne afholde kurser og have mulighed for at optage content til mine kanaler. Men det i sig selv er lidt for kedeligt og kunne i princippet være placeret i et industrikvarter. Så jeg har smidt en gigantisk stålø midt i rummet med basisfunktioner, men ellers er det bare et blankt stykke papir, der kan fyldes ud med hvad som helst. Indretningen er lavet efter et galleri, som min kæreste besøgte i Milano for 20 år siden. Det er stål, industri, italienske stole med plastryg, sorte designsofaer, hvide nuancer og et gråt værkstedsgulv. For mig de perfekte omgivelser til at fylde fladerne med kunst, der kan få plads og opmærksomhed. Jeg blev først rigtigt forført og fanget ind i kunstverdenen for 5-6 år siden. Jeg vil gerne give mit lille bidrag til at andre bliver nysgerrige og måske starter rejsen her, hvor vi blander genrerne og udvisker linjerne mellem topklasse kunst og hverdagslivet. Det var i første omgang en ambition at give byen og vores gæster noget ungt, noget dansk og noget pirrende. Gether Contemporary var min ønskepartner til den første udstilling, så jeg er stolt over, at det er lykkedes.

I gennem dit professionelle virke beskæftiger du dig med mad, design, følelsen af kvalitet og det autentiske indenfor en genren aestetisk ramme. Kan I fortælle lidt om hvordan du ser mulighederne for at de forskellige felter kan påvirke og informere hinanden?

Kunsten har en særlig plads i mit liv, og den vokser dag for dag – derfor skal den spille en aktiv rolle. Jeg tænker det på den måde, at hvis du sidder med noget lækkert mad, god vin i glasset, i en smuk og komfortabel stol og nogle spændende værker på væggen, så bliver samtalen omkring bordet bedre. I det hele taget tror jeg fuldt ud på, at du i dit liv skal sikre dig omgivelser fyldt med kvalitet skabt af rigtige mennesker, der har gjort sig umage og har noget på hjerte. Det gør en kæmpe forskel, og er noget, som jeg ønsker at give videre. Til mine børn, mine venner og mine gæster hos Brandt Brød. Det betyder ikke så meget om det rammer bevidst eller ubevidst, da jeg er sikker på, at det bidrager til helhedsoplevelsen. Jeg oplever for eksempel ofte, at et brød smager så godt, at det ikke kan beskrives. Det er et skønt øjeblik af nydelse og taknemmelighed og være til stede i nuet. Den samme følelse oplever jeg også i kunstens verden. Kunstnerne kan med deres elastiske hjerner og dygtige håndværk give os indsigter, hvor ord bliver for fattige. Og egentlig ikke er nødvendige. Oplevelser med smage og kunst er for mig nogle af de helt grundlæggende dele af livet. Det kan vi ikke undvære for at være hele mennesker. Hverken for os selv eller med hinanden. I sidste ende handler det om, at jeg gerne vil skabe et sted, hvor spændende mennesker kommer og får de bedste muligheder for nysgerrige samtaler, hvor jeg og alle andre kan møde nogle mennesker, som vi ellers ikke ville møde og blive præsenteret for nye tanker, lære af hinanden og få et rigere liv.


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STUDIO THINKINGHAND: A BRIEF INTERVIEW ON THE CURRENT EXHIBITION 'EXTREMOPHILIA'

I forbindelse med Studio ThinkingHands netop åbnede udstilling EXTREMOPHILIA har vi taget en snak med Rhoda og Mikkel om baggrunden og arbejdet med udstillingen:

Vi er utroligt glade for at byde jer velkommen i galleriet med jeres første soloudstilling Extremophilia - vil i fortælle lidt om jeres baggrund for udstillingen, og hvad der er de ledende tanker i de værkserier, I har produceret?

Vi er optaget af at udfordre den gængse naturforståelse, og undersøger gennem kunsten de videnskabelige nybrud, der sker inden for bl.a evolutionsteori, mikrobiologi og klimageologi, samt hvad de betyder for vores retning som samfund. Til udstillingen her har vi fokuseret på ekstreme miljøer og det der udspiller sig i dem. Vi har undersøgt det transformative og skabende potentiale i at presse materialer og mineraler det yderste af hvad de kan klare, samt set nærmere på hvad der sker når man introducerer tilsyneladende kaotiske kræfter i en formgivningsprocess. Til Extremophilia har vi opdateret vores klassiske Landscape Portraits, og nærmet os materialets egne grænser ved at lade resinen overophede helt op til det tipping point, hvor det ikke kan stoppe sin egen udvikling af varme, bobler og farver. Derudover introducerer vi værkserien Deep Time, der tager udgangspunkt i et samarbejde med det Arktiske universitet, hvor årtusinder gamle sedimenter fra boringer i verdenshavene er indlejret i flydende glas - en transformering der ellers kun findes under jordens overflade, og krydser tidsligheder med livsforhold. Som noget nyt i vores praksis har vi desuden introduceret Kunstig Intelligens i værkerne 'We are all hybrids', hvor vi på baggrund af indsamlet DNA har bedt en computer om at hybridisere op imod tyve arter sammen i nye spekulative evolutioner - Det glæder vi os særligt meget til at høre reaktioner på, fra besøgende

På trods af en længere række institutionelle udstillinger og større udsmykningsopgaver, er udstillingen faktisk jeres første galleriudstilling. Hvordan har det været at arbejde med det nye format?

Vi føler os taget rigtigt godt imod, og ser meget frem til at se hvordan værkerne kommer til at træde frem og opleves i et gallerirum som jeres. Den hvide kube er jo et paradoksalt rum, hvor kunstens eget udtryk og sprog rendyrkes på den ene side, men på den anden side også et rum, som skaber et skarpt og uforstyrret fokus på de undersøgelser og processer, vi har været igennem og mener er vigtige. Det er et interessant spændingsfelt, som går igen flere steder i vores arbejde, og som giver plads til fordybelse på flere måder, uanset hvem man er.

På trods af jeres dybe videnskabelige forankring, fremstår jeres værker hyper æstetiske. Kan I fortælle lidt om, hvordan I ser mødet mellem det teoretiske og det æstetiske i jeres værker?

For os er det æstetik en erkendelsesform, et slags sprog som giver adgang til sanselig forankring af verden, snarere end blot et udtryk for stil eller skønhed. Det er vigtigt for os at værkerne både taler til ideer, tanker og forestillingsevne, men også opleves gennem den sanserne, og på den måde kan skabe nye perspektiver der kommer ned i kroppen. Her er igen nogle interessante spændingsfelter - mellem videnskaben og kunsten, indholdet og formen, samt intentionen og oplevelsen - som på mange måder først lader værket stå færdigt i mødet med publikum, når det opleves, sanses og sættes i forbindelse.
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ENTER ART FAIR 2023

We are looking forward to welcoming you in booth 39 at Enter Art Fair 2023, 24-27 August where we will be presenting new works by:

LU YANG
ASGER DYBVAD LARSEN
CHRISTINE OVERVAD HANSEN
SIF ITONA WESTERBERG
STUDIO THINKINGHAND
MADS HYLDGAARD NIELSEN
UWE HENNEKEN




Enter Art Fair
24.08-27.08
Lokomotivværkstedet
Otto Busses Vej 5A
2450 Copenhagen SV

Thursday: VIP Preview (By invitation only)
Friday: 12.00 – 20.00
Saturday: 11.00 – 19.00
Sunday: 11.00 – 18.00

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CHART ART FAIR 2023

We are looking forward to welcoming you in booth 18 at CHART Art Fair 2023, 24-27 August where we will be presenting new works by:

RICHARD WOODS
JAY GARD
PIERRE KNOP
GIOELE AMARO
LAURA KL
ÜNTER
AMALIE JAKOBSEN
UWE HENNEKEN
JOCHEN M
ÜHLENBRINK


CHART Art Fair
24.08-27.08
Kunsthal Charlottenborg,
Kongens Nytorv 1, 1050 København

Thursday: 24.08 : 11.00 - 19.00 VIP Preview (by invitation only)
Friday: 25.08 : 11.00 – 19.00
Saturday: 26.08 : 11.00 – 18.00
Sunday: 27.08 : 11.00 – 17.00

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Rune Bosse at Thorvaldsens Museum

You can experience Rune Bosse's work 'Ur-Plant for Adonis' at Thorvaldsens Museum's summer exhibition FLORA ITALICA, that focuses on the flora of the past through a series of contemporary works o and never-before-exhibited historical plant sheets.

Opening: June 16th 4-7 PM

About the exhibition:

The exhibition is based on the poetic but true story that a diverse meadow flora from Italy sprouted at Thorvaldsen's Museum in the 1840s. It happened because Thorvaldsen's sculptures were packed with hay on the ship transports from Rome to Copenhagen. The wrapping hay was thrown on the museum's construction site, and seeds from the hay germinated. Over the summer, the historic meadow flora will sprout again in Thorvaldsen's Museum's yard, where the American artist Crystal Bennes has created a bed with exactly the same plant species. At the same time, the artists Camilla Berner, Rune Bosse, Karin Lorentzen, Italian Leone Contini and Swedish Åsa Sonjasdotter contribute with new site-specific artworks about the plants in Thorvaldsen's and our world.

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GIOELE AMARO FOR MAISON VALENTINO, PARIS

We want to highlight and congratulate Gioele Amaro for his collaboration with Valentino for the opening of their new flagship store in Paris!

The most French of the Italian fashion houses and the most Parisian of Roman Couture houses, reinvents itself on Avenue Montaigne. Valentino celebrated the opening during Paris Men’s Fashion Week and the Avenue Montaigne boutique is the first main flagship store to feature Valentino’s new retail concept!

 A gallery aura is conveyed by Gioele Amaro who will be exhibiting some of his most renowned and emblematic creations in the new Valentino store until July 15th. Amaro began his conversation with Valentino for the Resignify Exhibition in Beijing in 2021 and has also conceived a unique artwork that was revealed through a billboard at Avenue de L’Opéra.

Thank you Maison Valentino & creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli for inviting everybody to discover the world of Gioele Amaro!



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AMALIE JACOBSEN - PUPLIC COMMISSION IN PARIS

We are proud to present Amalie Jakobsen's first publicly commissioned work in Paris Osculating Orbit (V). The sculpture, with its elliptical forms, is a tribute to the solar system and its planets and is in keeping with the modern identity of the residence, and fits perfectly into the landscape of the eco-district.

The work is permanently installed in Clichy, Paris in the central courtyard of a residential building designed by Cogedim and Ogic Immobilier.

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Studio ThingkingHand at GLAS - museet for glaskunst

We are proud to announce the opening of Studio ThingkingHand's institutional solo at GLAS - the museum of glass art in Ebeltoft (DK).

In the exhibition EVOLUTIONS, the Danish-Australian artist duo, Studio ThinkingHand, presents a series of stories about nature as a wildly growing network of connected intelligences.

Opening: April 28th.
The exhibition runs until January 7 2024


For the exhibition, Studio ThinkingHand has worked based on scientific currents, which in these years are renegotiating our understanding of the theory of evolution from a linear development process to a more chaotic, random and complex dimension. Recent research indicates that evolutions happen all the time as a multitude of simultaneous relationships and adaptations that create hybrids between species. The exhibition asks whether a rewriting of our beginnings can shape new possible directions in the world of the future.

With the glass as a prism, EVOLUTIONS investigates the borderland between art and science. From the microscopic life that unfolds all around us, to the impact of technology on our world around us, to the geological time in which it all takes place.


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Jochen Mühlenbrink in Today's Politiken

“Right now, a German artist excels in a gallery on Flæsketorvet with deliberately hidden objects”

A warm thank you to Peter Michael Hornung and Politiken for the great review of jochen Mühlenbrinks’s solo exhibition ‘MWP’
And If you haven’t had the chance to experience Jochen Mühlenbrink’s amazing work yet, you still have some time! The exhibition is extended and runs until April 21.

From the press release:
Mühlenbrink’s impressive work with the Trompe l’oeil technique seems like an everlasting magic trick, and the transition from raw material to final work seems almost mythical. However, Mühlenbrink’s use of the technique differs from the historical one, as he not only creates two-dimensional illusions, but manages to make the deception material (here the tape is not just tape, but strokes that move out from the surface and crawl under the skin of the viewer). Mühlenbrink’s works lie on the edge between the banal, the technically superior and the strictly conceptual, and the exhibition highlights how Jochen Mühlenbrink has an impressively multifaceted approach to painting and to the world of things that we live in.

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We are hiring!

Gether Contemporary søger galleriassistent

Gether Contemporary søger en lønnet studentermedhjælper med interesse for kunst, kommunikation og formidling, der vil arbejde i galleriet ca. 15-20 timer pr. uge. fordelt over 2 hverdage samt hver anden lørdag fra 11.45 – 16.00.

Vi kan tilbyde en arbejdsplads, hvor du, i tæt samarbejde med galleriets øvrige assistent, får grundig erfaring med alle de arbejdsgange og opgaver, der udgør galleriets daglige drift.

Galleriets opgaver er mangeartede og spænder fra deciderede kunstfaglige til mere praktiske opgaver. Du vil få meget hands-on erfaring og der er rig mulighed for at få indflydelse på dine egne opgaver, som bl.a. kunne være:

• Udarbejdelse af pressemeddelelser, nyhedsbreve, udstillingstekster, salgsmateriale
• Udarbejde pressemateriale og content til sociale medier (Facebook, Instagram)
• Opdatering af hjemmeside og sociale medier
• Kontakt til kunstnere, kunder & besøgende
• Assistere ved udstillingsopbygning og nedtagning
• Forberedelse og deltagelse til ferniseringer og messer
• Logistisk arbejde i forbindelse med udstillinger og messer
• Håndtering af vores lager; oprydning, registrering og opdatering
• Håndtering af indkomne og udgående værker, herunder ned-og udpakning
• Forefaldne administrative og praktiske opgaver

Vores forventninger er, at du:

• Er struktureret, har en solid ordenssans og er glad for at systematisere
• Har en interesse for kunst, kulturelle events og formidling
• Er fleksibel både i forhold til arbejdstider og -opgaver
• Er yderst servicemindet, engageret og imødekommende
• Ikke er bange for at løfte, pakke og bruge en værktøjskasse
• Holder af godt humør og kan lide at arbejde i et lille og ambitiøst team
• Er bruger af InDesign / photoshop


Stillingen afhænger i sidste ende af dine færdigheder, lyst og engagement. Vi forventer, at du er udadvendt, selvstændigt arbejdende og har en god fornemmelse for kunst og kommunikation og brænder for at lære mere.

Galleriet er grundlagt i 2014 i Kødbyen af Sophus Gether. Galleriet repræsenterer en række danske og internationale kunstnere, afholder 7-8 udstillinger om året og deltager på messer i ind-og udland.

Du kan læse mere om galleriet her gethercontemporary.com

Send et CV og en kort motiveret tekst om dig selv til camilla@gethercontemporary.com, hvori du begrunder din interesse for at indgå i galleriets arbejde. Deadline fredag den 14. april.

Vi glæder os meget til at høre fra dig!

Venlig hilsen

GETHER CONTEMPORARY

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Art Düsseldorf 2023

We are looking so much forward to welcome you at booth no. D03 at Art Düsseldorf. We will be presenting new works by:

Lu Yang (CH)
Pierre Knop (FR)
Studio ThinkingHand (DK)
Christine Overvad Hansen (DK)
Sif Itona Westerberg (DK)

The five artists we will be presenting at Art Düsseldorf 2023, Lu Yang (CH), Sif Itona Westerberg (DK), Pierre Knop (FR), Studio ThinkingHand (DK) and Christine Overvad Hansen (DK) relate to each other beyond their differences in approach and medias, by a shared engagement with questions of human relations to their surroundings. All four engage with fundamental questions of existence, consciousness and physical or non-physical presence, and examine societal and religious narratives, icons and myths of origin from a cross-cultural and transhistorical perspective. In a broader sense, one can say that the four of them works with remnants and reappearances of different kinds, whether they be pre-historical, spiritual, or temporal, in the form of memories.

Art Düsseldorf 30.03-02.04.2023
Areal Böhler
Hansaallee 321
40549 Düsseldorf

Thursday 30 March: Preview
Friday 31 March: 12.00 - 7.00 PM
Saturday 1 April: 11.00 - 7.00 PM
Sunday 2 April: 11.00 - 6.00 PM


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Artist Talk: Sif Itona Westerberg, Brendan Fernandes and Naama Tsabar in conversation with curator Stephanie Cristello

Filmed on location in the gallery space of the exhibition Shades of Daphne, this talk features artists Brendan Fernandes, Naama Tsabar, and Sif Itona Westerberg in conversation with curator Stephanie Cristello. Through the lens of myth, culture, and history, the discussion traces their approaches to figuration via sensations of touch and sound.


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Soulscapes; group exhibition with Pierre Knop at Meyer Riegger

The group exhibition Soulscapes, in the upper part of Meyer Riegger, Berlin, gathers works that – according to Henneken’s understanding of art – can be understood as archetypal inner landscapes, as facets of the collective soul.
In all their diversity, together they create a powerful, synergistic field of wholeness.
Uwe Henneken thanks all artists for their trust in making their works available for this exhibition and the gallery for organizing and collecting the artworks internationally. Curated by Uwe Henneken

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Lu Yang at Kunsthalle Basel

Congratulations to Lu Yang who opened an incredible solo exhibition yesterday at Kunsthalle Basel LUYANG VIBRATORY FIELD.
The exhibition runs until May 21th and is curated by Elena Filipovic.

From the press release:
Lu Yang knows what it is like to die. And to be reborn. In the virtual world, that is. Across a thrillingly hypnotic oeuvre, the Shanghai- born, Tokyo-based artist has already under- gone countless digital rebirths, each more spectacular than the previous one. Battling demons, performing acrobatics, being prodded by scientists, saving others, facing demise: the animated figures modeled on LuYang’s face and body are apparently capa- ble of just about anything. His characters— dressed in appropriately wild outfits—in- habit pulsating, maximalist CGI worlds in which the hypermodern and the archaic, apocalypse and redemption meet. The artist’s practice is a persistent investigation, deploy- ing the cultures of anime, video gaming, sci-fi, neuroscience, Buddhism, Indonesian dance rituals, and digital technology in order to mine the mess (and magic) of our mortal condition

The fact that the human and the digital meet in LuYang’s art is no coincidence: in an era where our lives are infiltrated by technology on an ever more granular level, and the self is propagated in viral proportions on social media, the question of what it means to be human is becoming increasingly fundamental. The artist calls this dilemma nothing less than “the question of all questions.” LuYang has been wrestling with thatquestion ever since completing his studies in New Media Art at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou in 2010.It led him to create a stunningly complex body of works over the last decade that includes 3D animated films, virtual and aug- mented reality projects, computer games, motion capture performances, installations, and lightboxes. To make them, the artist has worked with a wide range of collaborators, including neuroscientists, pop stars, psycho- logists, software developers, experimental composers, traditional dancers, poets, robot- ics companies, philosophers, and science- fiction writers, among others. The results are en- grossing and fantastical, techno-psychedelic and sometimes terrifying, united in their attempt to tackle such enormous topics as biology, re- incarnation, or even global environmental destruction.

In all of these, as in LuYang’s biography, gender is fluid. So are age, religion, and nationality. Don’t expect to settle the knowledge of which pronouns apply to the artist—these shift in nearly every exhibition handout, article, or interview. And, starting with this exhibition in Basel, the artist’s birth year will be omitted in promotional matter so that he (the pronoun of choice for the moment) approaches ever more accurately the agelessness of his digital avatars.

For LuYang Vibratory Field at Kunsthalle Basel, the artist’s first solo exhibition in Switzerland, nearly every room evokes a different cosmos. It is as if his 3D animations and computer games spawned the physical environments in which they are nested.

2022

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SEASON'S GREETINGS

We would like to wish you all, friends of the gallery, artists and colleagues, a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Thank you for another fantastic and significant year, to our artists, who have managed to create thought-provoking, beautiful and visionary exhibitions, both here in the gallery and at museums, institutions and galleries around the world.

At the beginning of the new year, Sif Itona Westerberg will exhibit works in bronze and aerated concrete in the group exhibition Shades of Daphne at Kasmin Gallery in New York opening January 12, 2023. As the first exhibition in the gallery of the new year, we look forward to welcoming you to Asger Dybvad Larsen's third solo exhibition with us "Family Portraits" "Burned Out" "Falling" "Debris Generated by Generations" on 20 January.

In the past year, it has been a great honour to announce new representation of three international artists; Italian artist Gioele Amaro (IT), French/German artist Pierre Knop (DE/FR), and Shanghai-based Lu Yang (CN). Pierre Knop and Gioele Amaro have each presented stunning solo exhibitions in the gallery this year, with Dark Suns in May and Misplaced Narratives in September, respectively. In 2022, Lu Yang has shown works at the Venice Biennale, and in October, we presented new works by Lu Yang, from her series DOKU at ASIA NOW in Paris. Lu Yang, who has been awarded Deutsche Bank's "Artist of the Year 2022", is also currently showing at the solo exhibition LuYang: DOKU Experience Center at Palais Populaire (Berlin) until 13 February 2023 and at The Zabludowicz Collection in London with the exhibition NetiNeti until March 2023.

Additionally, 2022 has enriched us with Amalie Jakobsen's solo exhibition Aquifer, Sif Itona Westerberg's solo exhibition Yearn! and the group exhibitions New Positions and The Sun Rises in Peculiar Ways with works by both represented artists and new acquaintances.

Rune Bosse's solo exhibition Treefall at HEART - Herning Museum of Contemporary Art is still on view until 26 February 2023. Treefall takes its point of departure in the cycle of nature; decay, transience, and resurrection, from which Rune Bosse has unfolded his extensive installation practice. In Treefall, Rune Bosse uses several new media, and you will, among other things, be greeted by six-meters-tall video projections, a cacophonous sound curtain of falling trees, and mechanically breathing trees, illuminated by the glow of UV light.

Last Saturday, Amalie Jakobsen's monumental public sculpture 'Kaleidoscope' was inaugurated in Grenaa, Denmark. The 6-meters-tall sculpture is a construction of rhombuses that reflect fragments of the sky, the earth and the viewer. 'Kaleidoscope' is an anniversary gift from Grenaa Art and Music Association to the city of Grenaa.

In 2023, we look forward to presenting exhibitions in the gallery by Asger Dybvad Larsen, German artist Jochen Mühlenbrink, Ava Samii, South African-born, Athens-based sculptor, and painter Zoë Paul, British painter, designer, sculptor and architect Richard Woods and more.

We look forward to seeing you in the new year in the gallery or around the world.

From all of us at the gallery we would like to wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Gether Contemporary team

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Amalie Jakobsen: 'Kalejdoskop' in Grenaa

In December, Amalie Jakobsen's public sculpture Kalejdoskop was inaugurated in Grenaa. The 6 meter tall sculpture is a construction of rhombuses that reflect fragments of the sky, the earth and the viewer. 'Kalejdoskop' is an anniversary gift from Grenaa Art and Music Association to the city of Grenaa.

Amalie Jakobsen about Kalejdoskop:

In a time when our perception of the world is breaking down, and where we are repeatedly reminded of the fragility of our existence and of our world, my intention is to create a sculpture that invites the viewer into the work to reflect on themselves and their position in the world, our zeitgeist and the colossal and universal wheel of life we, as humans, are inextricably linked to.

The sculpture I have worked towards consists of broken pieces of sky and fragments of stars, and glimpses of earth, forest, city and the viewer's own body which are mirrored and condensed in the sculpture. When you enter the work and look up, a kaleidoscopic view is revealed, reflecting the surrounding environment, the earth and the sky, and into the interior of the sculpture. A direct look out through the sculpture stages a multi-faceted perspective, which invokes the infinite perspectives and nuances that our world and our reality consists of.

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Lu Yang at ASIA NOW

We are proud to be presenting works by Lu Yang at this years ASIA NOW from 20-23 October in Paris.

Born in Shanghai, Lu Yang is one of the most important contemporary Asian artists and this year’s Deutsche Bank “Artist of the Year." With a fascination of the human body, neurology and control, Lu Yang's works provide a bridge between scientific technology and aesthetics drawn from the hypermediated nature of the contemporary East Asian culture industry. Lu Yang professes to 'live on the internet' and Lu's works appear as a poetic madness of internet-era politics, religion, technology and consumerism.

At this years ASIA NOW, we will be presenting works that focus on a virtual reincarnation called Dokusho Dokushi, or DOKU for short. The gender-neutral avatar is a hyperrealistic figure whose countenance is modeled on LuYang’s face. All facial expressions and movement patterns are performed by dancers and then recorded using motion capture technology, a process that generates 3D models on this basis for video games, for example.

Lu Yang presents DOKU not only through the art of video, but also through round mandala compositions. LuYang studied at the China Academy of Arts in Hangzhou and lives and works in Shanghai. Since 2015, LuYang has been involved in numerous group exhibitions worldwide, currently at The Milk of Dreams, 59th Venice Biennale. The artist has had solo exhibitions in Beijing, Moscow, and most recently Aarhus and Erlangen, and as of the end of September, at the Zabludowicz Collection. 2019 awardee of the BMW Art Journey.

‘DOKU Human’ embodies the human realm of existence. Of all the avatars, this one probably resembles LuYang the most. But already in this incarnation LuYang questions our binary ideas. For the avatar resembles a cyborg. It is wearing a technoid suit, whereby it is not clear whether he is artificial skin or the body itself. In fact a Japanese master of the art of tribal tattoo, was asked to design tattoos for a digital human, after which the avatar’s body pattern was realized. DOKU Human seems to be a kind of blueprint for all of the other incarnations and is surrounded by a hypermodern urban world. In Buddhism, it is most desirable to be reborn in the human realm. Although in the human world suffering is inevitably experienced through birth, aging, illness, and death, and there is violence, separation, fears, human beings have the opportunity to learn to overcome themselves and their destructive behavior.

DOKU Heaven embodies the illusion of a completely carefree, bliss-filled existence in the realm of the gods or devas, a Garden of Eden, a conception of paradise. The avatar, clad in playful clothing, dances on the stream of a river adorned with fluorescent crystals, surrounded by a paradisiacal tropical forest full of spherical sounds and light phenomena. Here, one can also see the influence of various traditional Balinese and Indonesian dance styles, such as Legong, which LuYang recorded with dancers in Bali using motion capture and then digitally reproduced in the movements and facial expressions of her avatars. But the halo of DOKU Heaven seems like a deceptive aura. In the realm of Heaven there are also the temptations of luxury and idleness, the propensity for ignorance price, which prevent the pursuit of simplicity and awakening.

DOKU Asura represents the reincarnation realm of the asuras, the fighters, warlike titans or demons who are also celestial beings. In Hindu mythology, they were supplanted by the devas. In Sanskrit, Sura means “light being.” The prefix “A” indicates the opposite. Asuras are therefore “opponents of the light beings.” They quarrel with the gods and try to take their place, but they do not succeed despite constant struggle. The dance of DOKU Asura is inspired by the Indonesian Warrior or Baris dance. The design of DOKU Asura’s armor and the temple architecture interspersed with futuristic towers combine various global historical, mythical and religious elements with high-tech. Samsara, the wheel of life, is also integrated here in an ambience that is clearly reminiscent of the aesthetics of fantasy games.

DOKU Animal is at once naive and complex. This incarnation of LuYang, with its ear cap and boots made of fake fur, is less reminiscent of a deity or a superhero than of a cos player. Or the “Harajuku style” influenced by manga, goth, techno and Lolita fashion, which originated in the boutique district of the same name in Tokyo and conquered the world in the 1990s and early 2000s. But DOKU Animal does not dance in a teen show or at a techno rave or sporting event. Rather, the avatar appears in a kind of medical laboratory, which is simultaneously an abattoir, a gym for animals, and Noah’s Ark. It also refers to our ambivalent relationship to animals, to our compulsion to optimize and market not only ourselves, but everything around us. Of course, it also alludes to the suffering of animals, which continues to increase in unimaginable proportions in the ever more highly industrialized world. In Samsara, rebirth as an animal stands for instinct, ignorance, the blind drive for self-preservation. Animals, like humans, also have a Buddha nature. But they are incapable of recognizing it. They always remain hunter or prey and thus cannot escape the cycle of eating and being eaten.

DOKU Hungry Ghost looks like a gothic pop star. The realm of Hungry Ghosts, the so-called Pretas, is traditionally inhabited by emaciated beings who can swallow only one drop of water at a time and are thus tormented by insatiable hunger and thirst. Hungry Ghosts represent the sins of addiction and greed. DOKU the Self begins with an apocalyptic vision in which DOKU Hungry Ghost wantonly destroys human civilization with earthquakes and monstrous thunderstorms, which it blames for its miserable existence. He dances in the style of Kebyar Duduk, an Indonesian dance in which a stooped posture and the use of fans are typical. Yet DOKU Hungry Ghost is a cold, unempathic apparition, reminiscent of a manipulative player. In the commentary, the avatar is also referred to as a “caster,” someone who establishes roles and identities instead of transcending them.

DOKU Hell dances with a severed head in his hand—the head of DOKU Human or LuYang? This archetypal motif alludes to Eastern and Western religions and art history. It can be seen as a reference to Kali, the Hindu goddess of death and destruction, and at the same time the composition is reminiscent of Caravaggio’s famous painting David with the Head of Goliath (1600/01). Perhaps it also hints at the symbolic death of the artist, who is decapitated by his avatar. DOKU Hell’s dance is inspired by the demon queen Rangda, who fights against Barong, the leader of the good spirits. The battle between the two is embodied in the Balinese Barong dance.

In Samsara, hell is the lowest realm, and those reborn here must endure torment until their bad karma is repaid. With LuYang, a medialized, globally recognizable version of hell can be seen, reminiscent of the architecture of science fiction and mystery films or even the series Stranger Things. But as with the higher realms of Samsara or Dante’s Inferno, Hell is only a product of the human imagination.

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Asger Dybvad Larsen in 'Minimalism-Maximalism-Mechanissmmm' at Kunsthal Aarhus

We are proud to announce that Asger Dybvad Larsen will be participating in the exhibition Minimalism-Maximalism-Mechanissmmm at Aarhus Kunsthal.

Minimalism-Maximalism-Mechanissmmm is a group exhibition in four acts realised in collaboration with Art Sonje Center, Seoul. Staging artistic formats which examine how artists select, use and process materials to tell stories about their surroundings and daily life, the project focuses on how a contemporary art institution presents itself to its artists and audiences, getting visitors to experience and learn how abstract and meaningful connections can be created in space.

The exhibition enables audiences to encounter multiple ways of viewing and questioning curatorial and institutional approaches to exhibition making. The title has several connotations. ‘Minimalism’ refers to an art movement which began after World War II in the Western art world.

One movement is often a reaction to others and thus the term ‘maximalism’, which hints at an aesthetic of excess, is a reaction to the principles of the Minimalist movement. A ‘mechanism’ is part of a larger process, as we observe in abstract and physical systems, and a set of multiple mechanisms is typically called a machine.

The arts, which are composed of a myriad of systems and workings, might therefore be called an art machine. Lastly, ‘ssmmm’ is a purposeful misspelling. It is intended to be read as a stutter, as if a machine was getting stuck and making repeated, mechanical noises. When visiting an arts institution frequently, audiences might have an experience that seems to stutter, that repeats itself and seems stuck.

Act 1 and Act 2 are intended to generate a contemplative relationship between the artwork, its making, and the observer. Act 1 presents a grouping of minimalistic art consisting of tactile and sensual works on canvas and on paper, as well as mixed media sculptures. Embedded in these works are the material traces left behind by their own making, which reveal how the artistic process is a fundamental element of each work. Their materiality is mainly influenced by the ways they were touched by nature and/or an urban setting. For instance, Kang Dongju’s drawings are propelled by night walks, during which she traced patterns on pavements to mimic starry night skies. Act 2 presents paintings where the artists have created narrative stories from urban and rural areas. Whilst the storytelling is generated through the artists’ memory, their materiality is experienced through the canvas, or the real and fictional characters they depict. Kent Iwemyr’s paintings, for example, tell stories about people and odd events that he has experienced in or around the small community in Sweden where he lives.

Act 3 invites audiences to interact with the works and actively participate with their hands, minds and bodies. For instance, the artist collective The Dumpling Club wants people to participate, share and co-produce recipes that establish relations. Stories unfold while making and eating dumplings, transforming a banal cooking session into a community-based experience focused on stories which centre around immigration, the entanglement between food and identity, and a longing for different futures.

Titled Archive of Aesthetic Exploration, Act 4 is an accessible cabinet of curiosities. It consists of an archive where audiences are invited to explore hundreds of small artworks stored in boxes, and a laboratory where visitors can set up and juxtapose artworks taken from the archive. In this way, they get to experience how the practice of curating can influence the relationship between artwork and viewer. As an example, Tove Storch’s series of untitled, glazed ceramic plates gives visitors a rare opportunity to get close to her seductive world by touching their delicate surfaces.

In the first iteration of the show at Art Sonje Center (20.01.2022 – 06.03.2022; 17.03.2022 – 24.4.2022), the exhibition was divided into four acts. At Kunsthal Aarhus, the first three are unified, edited, and condensed in such a way that the previously distinct lines between the acts blur. All acts shift away from a traditional format which uses a physical and static display, and move towards a participatory, relational and activating exhibition.

The exhibition is curated by Jacob Fabricius and Mikkel Hammer Elming

Special Thanks
Shin Dokho, Cho Eunchae, Galleri Magnus Karlsson (Stockholm), Kim Haeju, Cho Heehyun, Kim Jang Un, Kim Sunjung, Moon Jeongyeon, Kvadrat A/S, Lee Seolhui, V1 Gallery (Copenhagen)

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Rune Bosse Treefall film at HEART - Contemporary Museum of Art Herning

As a part of Rune Bosse's current solo exhibition at HEART - Museum of Contemporary Art we present a new film about the making of Treefall.

In his practice Rune Bosse investigates nature and its processes through a relational poetic and scientific approach. He studies its structures, patterns and attributes, meticulously getting to grips with how everything works and grows and how each element effects one another.

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Rune Bosse: 'Træfald' Solo exhibition at HEART

As part of the exhibition programme 'HEART Future' it is with great pleasure that HEART-Herning Museum of Contemporary Art presents the first solo museum exhibition with danish artist Rune Bosse in fall 2022.

Exhibition period 09.09.22 - 06.08.23

Press release:

In his practice Rune Bosse investigates nature and its processes through a relational poetic and scientific approach. He studies its structures, patterns and attributes, meticulously getting to grips with how everything works and grows and how each element effects one another.

Saturating his work is the thought that everything is connected through a logic of nature, body and mind. In his work the interconnectedness is a premise for everything to exist in the way it does. It is about the effect of nature on nature and of man on nature and vice versa. Nothing exists on its own but is rather part of a relational chain causing effect on one another. Studying trees, roots, plants, germinating grains, withering leaves etc. and therein the fundamental natural mechanisms is an attempt to understand ourselves from the perspective of the brief timeliness of a human lifespan.

With great patience Bosse follows natures slow growth and its interrelations, meticulously gathering evidence for his studies; soil, roots, branches, leafs, plants etc. and submits the material to various scientific and poetic processes bringing to light its fundamental parts. The work cannot be rushed or hurried along as it's dependent on the pace of the natural processes involved, which with time and step by step will unveil its changeable secrets. Assembling all the various samples and specimens are part of the work to map and to understand.

Bosse's ordered and scientific approach is coupled with a poetic sensitivity. The samples and specimens remain just that without a philosophical background through which to understand and relate his findings. Therefore many of his works are accompanied by poems, underlining the work and becoming an enveloping matter binding everything together. The poetry becomes a tool to sum up and define the direction of his studies and to accompany our understanding of his findings. Bosse's investigation of nature is an investigation into the mechanisms of life itself and in turn of ourselves and of our own understanding of who and what we are in relation to the nature we are intrinsically connected to and deeply depend on.

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Marie Kølbæk Iversen: Histories of Predation at O-Overgaden

We are proud to announce Marie Kølbæk Iversens's solo exhibition 'Histories of Predation' at O-Overgaden

The exhibition runs from August 27 - October 23 2022

From the press release:

Marie Kølbæk Iversen’s exhibition at O – Overgaden interlaces East Atlantic folktales of merpeople, the history of capitalism, and new marine biological research in the extremely long-lived grey shark.

Histories of Predation is an exhibition project by Marie Kølbæk Iversen located at the intersection between mythology, art, and science. Kølbæk Iversen investigates how non-modern forms of knowledge may contribute to reflections about historical and current cultural conflicts in the North Atlantic region.

The exhibition is rooted in the juxtaposition of East Atlantic folk songs about merpeople, and the extremely long-lived grey shark, also known as Greenland shark or gurry shark. The shark’s transit zones stretch from Northeastern North America, Greenland, Iceland, Svalbard, across the White Sea, and, towards the south, the Faroe Islands, the British Isles, Norway, and Skagerrak. Across the Nordic-Germanic languages, the grey shark has traditionally been designated as a ‘merperson’: In Icelandic and Danish as ‘merman’—‘hákarl’/‘havkal’—and in Norwegian and Swedish as ‘mermaid’—‘håkjerringa’/‘håkjäring.’ Through the geographic and linguistic trajectories of the grey shark, Marie Kølbæk Iversen activates mythological axes of the Atlantic Ocean by including folklore from her East Atlantic home region in Western Jutland that features merpeople as dissident Others in relation to the Danish state and its authorities.

The exhibition at O – Overgaden is anchored in a video installation based on microscopic video recordings from within the eye lenses of the grey shark. Through carbon-14 dating of its eye lens nuclei, recent marine biological research from the University of Copenhagen has shown that the shark may live to become as old as 272 to 512 years, which opens up a perspective of more-than-human ‘eye witnessing’ that far exceeds the human life span: if we direct our gaze towards humanity’s cultural history from the shark’s place in time, the life of a single shark may span the development of capitalism, the foundation of modern science, the industrial revolution, the development of consumer society, historical and current colonialisms, and the Anthropocene era. The project thus invites us to imagine different realities across diverging temporal and spatial scales: the historical past, which travels to the present through the shark’s gaze, and the distant future, which we may imagine ourselves beholding with the eyes of newborn sharks. Just as the Heathlands’ songs about merpeople, the grey shark–the ‘havkal’—becomes an embodied mythical figure in Marie Kølbæk Iversen’s work, connecting the modern Western world with its outsides.

Rovhistorier | Histories of Predation also features the release of the music album Donnimaar. O Tilli. The album is part of Kølbæk Iversen’s ongoing investigations into the artistic and commons-based heritages of the West Jutlandic Heathlands, and is a sonic exploration of the ways and doings of merpeople at the edge of modernity.

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ENTER ART FAIR 2022

We are looking forward to welcoming you at booth no. 21 at ENTER Art Fair 2022, where we will be presenting new works by:

Rune Bosse
Amalie Jakobsen
Birk Bjørlo
Asger Dybvad Larsen
Pierre Knop
Sif Itona Westerberg
Lu Yang

Enter Art Fair 2022
25.08-28.08.22
Tunnelfabrikken
Oceanvej 1, 2150 Nordhavn

Thursday 25.08 : Preview
Friday 26.08 : 12–8 PM
Saturday 27.08 : 11-7 PM
Sunday 28.08 : 11-6 PM

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CHART ART FAIR 2022

We are looking forward to welcoming you at booth no. 12 at CHART Art Fair 2022, where we will be presenting new works by:

Pierre Knop
Sif Itona Westerberg
Christine Overvad Hansen
Gioele Amaro

CHART Art Fair
26.08-28.08

Kunsthal Charlottenborg,
Kongens Nytorv 1, 1050 København

Thursday 25.08 : Preview
Friday 26.08. : 11-7 PM
Saturday 27.08. : 11-6 PM
Sunday 28.08 : 11-5 PM

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Christine Overvad Hansen and Sif Itona Westerberg in 'Metamorphoses' at Sophienholm

The exhibition Metamorphoses presents works by leading Danish contemporary artists who all work, in different ways, with metamorphosis and transformation - in the form of a transformation from one state, form or understanding to something else. The artists often resort to myths and legends from antiquity and the Middle Ages, reinterpret them and "morph" them into our contemporary age and conversations. They incorporate the hybrid as a fusion of forms, narratives across past and future.

The exhibition taps into current debates and the questions we ask ourselves today: Is it an expression of the idea that everything is changing and that the boundaries between man/nature, nature/man/technology are becoming blurred, and that everything and everyone changes and can be changed from one thing to something else? Or is it a reflection of the fact that our time involves a longing for the past in an attempt to understand and act in a contemporary time characterized by crises?

Several of the artists work with the space between technology and myth or the historical, so that the works appear both archaeological, contemporary and futuristic at the same time.

The exhibiting artists are: Sif Itona Westerberg, Nanna Abell, Johanne Helga Heiberg, Amalie Smith, Christine Overvad Hansen, Kinga Bartis and Helene Nymann.

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Amalie Jakobsen in CLIMATE OF CONCERN at Radius CCA

Amalie Jakobsen is proud to participate in the group exhibition Climate of Concern: Burning Out in the Age of Fossil Expressionism at Radius Center for Contemporary Art and Ecology in Delft.

Participating artists:
Bianca Bondi, Julian Charrière, Amalie Jakobsen, Regina de Miguel, Agnieszka Polska, Lisa Rave, Oliver Ressler, Miriam Sentler, Sam Smith

CLIMATE OF CONCERN is the second exhibition of the Underland year program, examining the current over-indebtedness to the fossil fuel industry and mineral extractivism through the work of nine artists.

In 1991, the petrochemical business group Shell released the documentary Climate of Concern, which displayed the potentially catastrophic consequences of climate change: increasing drought, extreme weather, floods, crop failures, disappearing islands, and migration. Nevertheless, Shell, alongside other companies such as Exxon and BP, deliberately hid internal reports carried out in the nineteen-eighties that predicted the catastrophic planetary consequences of the increasing emission of carbon dioxide released by fossil fuels extraction. Still to this day, Shell continues to do business as usual by profiting from fossil fuel extraction, actively contributing to climate change. Coal, petroleum, and natural gas have become an inseparable part of all aspects of industrial and energy production, and a substantial part of the technological ‘progress’ in history has been possible through the extraction of such resources. As a consequence, we have become intertwined with fossil memory so much so that there is no single aspect in our lives that is not somehow impacted by the (ab)use of fossil fuels. Everywhere we look there is a manifestation of what philosopher Peter Sloterdijk has called ‘fossil expressionism’: from the buildings we inhabit, the pavement they stand on, and the cars that pass them by, to the clothes we wear or the wrapping of our food; traces of fossil fuels are part of our daily landscape, identity, and existence.

The joint trace-effects of advanced capitalism, technological transformation, and the resulting environmental breakdown are increasingly becoming matters of urgent socio-political changes that transcend humanity and apply to every living organism on the planet. The second chapter of Underland explores how the current over-indebtedness on fossil fuels provides both the framework and the backdrop for our ways of thinking, being, and acting to an untenable regime of ecological collapse. What are ways of abandoning fossil fuel culture and shifting towards sustainable practices of living? How can this Devil’s bargain with non-renewable energy be reversed, and what alternative relationships can be established for a future beyond fossil-based lifestyles?

The all-pervasive use of fossil fuels shapes our thinking, acting, and capacity to relate to things and to one another; artist and author Brett Bloom has coined it petrosubjectivity.Petrosubjectivity is in our food, our healthcare, our means of transport, our clothes, our sex. While conditioning every action and thought we produce, it hinders any attempt to reverse it. This is exemplified in renewable energy, or, what Bloom suggests calling more accurately, ‘fossil fuel dependent energy’. In order to produce windmills and solar panels, huge amounts of waste and emissions are produced. By 2050, the International Renewable Energy Agency estimates that close to seventy-eight million metric tons of solar panels will have become obsolete, and that the world will be generating about six million metric tons of new solar e-waste per year. Turbine blades, on the other hand, shortly become obsolete, and the energy production in wind farms gradually decrease over time, becoming remnants of ‘green’ alternatives that nevertheless keep on disrupting the landscape and altering biodiversity. That is not to say that individual, more sustainable choices are to be dismissed: it is rather a matter of dismantling the misleading impression of ‘green’ alternatives and products promoted and lobbied by fossil fuel companies in the hypocritical practice of greenwashing.

In the Anthropocene, fossilization does not only occur organically. Humans have substantially modified landscapes through the urbanisation of cities, which will leave behind a fossil record both above—skyscrapers and highways—and below ground—metro and sewage systems. Humans have also altered the streams of rivers, the pH of oceans—causing acidification—and the composition of the atmosphere. All these alterations intervene directly in the geological development of the planet, causing major shifts that could eventually compare to great geological changes that radically transformed life on Earth. Land, conceived as a commodity for human use and enjoyment, is abused for the sake of our current carbon-infused lifestyles.

As writer Robert MacFarlane postulates, the Anthropocene compels us to insert our thinking in ‘deep time’, a time scale that stretches beyond human life and challenges the presumption that the world exists for human profit only, in eternal availability. Fossil fuels are limited, and yet fossil-burning enterprises are keen on making and burning as many new fossils as possible, as quick as possible. Professor Donna Haraway envisions the near future geologists reading our fossils in the strata of rocks both on land and underwater. Yet geologists are currently able to do so, as human waste is already fossilising in plastiglomerates, a composed material made of rock and molten plastic. Despite continuous evidence of fossil culture’s effacing consequences and the thin chances of surviving them, we have little capacity to comprehend how our idea of self, subjecthood, and the world is shaped by oil relationships because of their implicit ubiquity. Making petrosubjectivity explicit stands as a most urgent need to eventually free ourselves from our current dependency to it. How can we prepare on as wide a scope possible for subverting fossil culture? How can we still operate in systems of required extractivism, and what does that entail for our concepts of nature, culture, and ecology? What are the chances of worldly commitments to recognising the urgency to develop alternative logics of existence?



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Gioele Amaro: Q&A

We are proud to announce that Gioele Amaro (IT) will do a solo exhibition in the gallery from 19.08.22 - 24.09.22. For that occasion, we have asked him a couple of questions:

Q: We are very proud to show your first solo exhibition with the gallery opening 19 August. Can you tell us a little bit about the concept of the show?

A: Is about the very old question that every painters has to go trought: what is art and what is beauty? Art is an expression of our thoughts, emotions, intuitions, and desires, but it is even more personal than that: it’s about sharing the way we experience the world, which for many is an extension of personality. It is the communication of intimate concepts that cannot be faithfully portrayed by words alone. And because words alone are not enough, we must find some other vehicle to carry our intent. But the content that we instill on or in our chosen media is not in itself the art. Art is to be found in how the media is used, the way in which the content is expressed

Q: Since you did your duo exhibition at the gallery last autumn you’ve had a really busy time. Can you tell us what you’ve been up to since then and how your work has developed?

A: I was lucky enough to deepen digital art in its various forms and to get closer to different cultures especially in the East where I worked with great people.

Q:Where do you find inspiration for your work, is it books and the arts or do you have other fields that inspire you in developing your work?

A: Above all fiction, books, essay novels by great artists. I graduated in art and architecture so there are many things I would like to read and have heard about that are stuck in the future for the moment.....

Q: I know you’ve got a (busy) great schedule but summer is approaching fast. Where’s you favourite place to kick back and relax and enjoy your time of?

A: Francesco, Ernesto, Fausto, Mattia, Valerio are my islands. I can't think of a nice place without thinking about spending time there with family or friends. But if one day they all be busy i'll choose somewhere in Sicily!

Q: Looking into the future can you tell us a little about what you have on your horizon?

A: Loving someone as much as i love my work.

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From "Abstraction" to Abstraction

Amalie Jakobsen and Birk Bjørlo is participating in the exhibition From "Abstraction" to Abstraction at The Stefan Gierowski Foundation in Warszawa, Poland

"What is abstract art? How to recognize it? What is now understood in the world as abstraction and how does it compare to what I currently think about abstraction?" - asks prof. Stefan Gierowski, the originator of the exhibition.

At the exhibition, we will see the works of young (up to 35 years old) female artists and artists from various countries; incl. from Poland, Hungary, Austria, Ukraine, Germany, Denmark, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Spain and the United States. Their work will be the starting point for a discussion on the contemporary definition of the term "abstraction" in art, especially in painting. The exhibition will be arranged by two artists working in the field of painting and spatial forms: Emilia Kina and Bartek Buczek. Reflections on the condition of non-figurative painting and the way it is perceived by contemporary people will be summarized in the publication accompanying the exhibition. The exhibition will include tours and workshops. The artists and works exhibited at the exhibition were selected by the Foundation's team in consultation with prof. Stefan Gierowski.

Exhibiting artists:
Anouk Lamm Anouk, Justyna Baśnik, Birk Bjørlo, Szilvia Bolla, Bartek Buczek, Hannah Sophie Dunkelberg, Edyta Hul, Naila Ibupoto, Amalie Jakobsen, Roberto Jamora, Marcin Jasik, Emilia Kina, Bartosz Kowal, Julia Krupa, Sofiia Kupetska, Jeewi Lee, Grzegorz Łoznikow, Kaja Marzec, Patrycja Masiarz, Krzysztof Mętel, Márton Nemes, Iza Opiełka, Kinga Popiela, Olga Skorża, Stach Szumski, Serena Vestrucci, Keke Vilabelda, Anna Vostruchovaite, Lotte Wieringa, Paulina Włostowska, Amanda Ziemele

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Gether Contemporary at Art Herning 2022

We are proud to announce that we will be participating in this year's Art Herning, May 6-8.

We will be presenting works by: Sif Itona Westerberg, Birk Bjørlo, Jay Gard, Rune Bosse, Amalie Jakobsen, Asger Dybvad Larsen and Lu Yang.

We look forward to welcoming you in booth no. 6040

Opening hours - Art Herning:
6. Maj: 14.00-19.00
7. Maj: 11.00-17.00
8. Maj: 11.00-17.00

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Rune Bosse: 'Den Frie Udstilling 2022: Atmosfærer' at Den Frie Udstillingsbygning

We are happy to announce that Rune Bosse is one of this years invited guest exhibitors, together with Ester Fleckner and Marie Thams, for the exhibition 'Den Frie Udstilling 2022: Atmospheres'. The artists are invited to respond with works in one of the categories: action, euphoria, melancholy, spirituality, depending on the atmosphere they see their works belong to.

The exhibition runs from March 26 - May 29 2022

Opening: March 25 2022, 4-7 pm

The association Den Frie is Denmark’s oldest artist association and the forthcoming exhibition presents works by the association’s artists and invited guests. The association is an artistic community where artists gather across generations, practices and artistic attitudes to explore new artistic ideas and concepts.

The starting point for Den Frie 22 is the concept of atmosphere – a mood in a room or a tone that strikes. An atmosphere is constantly changing and is always influenced by a given space and all it encompasses.

The exhibition is curated by artists Sophia Kalkau and Milena Bonifacini

Sif Itona Westerberg - Nymp - Aerated concrete - 192 x 80 x 5,5 cm - Arken Museum of Modern Art 2022
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Sif Itona Westerberg - Nymp - Aerated concrete - 192 × 80 × 5,5 cm - Arken Museum of Modern Art 2022

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Sif Itona Westerberg in 'Women and Change' at ARKEN

Sif Itona Westerberg is proud to participate in the group exhibition 'Women and Change' at Arken Museum of Modern Art

There are treats aplenty in store in the exhibition Women and Change, which focuses on 150 years of very different representations of women and gender in art.

What does it mean to be a woman today? What is feminine? Who defines what femininity is? Who can be female? And is femininity gender specific at all? The exhibition Women and Change unfolds how Western art history has depicted women from the Modern Breakthrough of the late nineteenth century to the most recent contemporary art. In a wealth of works of art by Danish and international artists, you can explore how artists have, over the course of the past 150 years, reflected, responded to and resisted changing perceptions of both women and gender: from Impressionist portraits to performative body art. From lush studies of nudes to critical examinations of how history is written.

The exhibition features works by Marina Abramovic, Genesis Belanger, Bolette Berg and Marie Høeg, Dara Birnbaum, Benedikte Bjerre, Louise Bourgeois, Elina Brotherus, Nancy Burson, Arvida Byström, Claude Cahun, Sophie Calle, Cassils, Franciska Clausen, Kate Cooper, Anne Katrine Dolven, Marlene Dumas, Ditte Ejlerskov and EvaMarie Lindahl, Paul Gauguin, Guerrilla Girls, Gudrun Hasle, Lea Guldditte Hestelund, Astrid Holm, Olivia Holm-Møller, Sophie Holten, Kirsten Justesen, Lena Johanson, Birgit Jürgenssen, Marie Krøyer, P.S. Krøyer, Johannes Larsen, Marie Laurencin, Sarah Lucas, Vilhelm Lundstrøm, Ana Mendieta, Lee Miller, Carla Colsmann Mohr, Berthe Morisot, Emilie Mundt, Wangechi Mutu, Kai Nielsen, Astrid Noack, Frida Orupabo, Lene Adler Petersen, Laure Prouvost, Paula Rego, Tabita Rezaire, Pipilotti Rist, Niki de Saint Phalle, Luna Scales, Tschabalala Self, Cindy Sherman, Apolonia Sokol, Alina Szapocznikow, Vibeka Tandberg, Mickalene Thomas, Andy Warhol, Gerda Wegener, Sif Itona Westerberg, J.F. Willumsen, Francesca Woodman, Kristian Zahrtmann and Cajsa von Zeipel.

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Asger Dybvad Larsen: 'Minimalism-Maximalism-Mechanissmm Act 1–Act' at Art Sonje Center, Seoul


We are excited to see Asger Dybvad Larsen as part of the group exhibition Minimalism-Maximalism-Mechanissmm Act 1–Act 2, January 20 - March 6 2022 at Art Sonje Center 2-3F, Seoul, South Korea

The exhibition will stage traditional expressions in a non-traditional and experimental setting. With clear curatorial intent, the exhibition examines how artists select, use and work with materials. Minimalism-Maximalism- Mechanissmmm’s four acts develop from a traditional setting and physically, static display to a participatory, relational, and activating exhibition. Through the series of four acts the audience will encounter multiple ways of disseminating, experiencing, utilizing, viewing, and questioning curatorial methods and institutional approach to presenting works.

The exhibition is curated by Jacob Fabricius

2021

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Lu Yang Digital Descending at ARoS

Shanghai-based Lu Yang is a rapidly rising star on the international art scene, and ARoS now presents the artist’s first-ever solo show at a European art museum.

The exhibition Digital Descending at ARoS takes the form of a flashing immersive world made up of sounds, screens, film and a video game, creating a sensuous and hectic digital universe. Visitors move through Lu Yang’s virtual parallel world inhabited by gods and demons, heroes, warriors and cyborgs inspired by universes hailing from the realms of gaming, manga and Eastern religions.

In the various works featured in the exhibition, the artist’s own genderless avatar appears in multiple versions, including the brand-new hyper-realistic avatar DOKU, which constitutes the main character in the work DOKU – 6 Realms of Reincarnation. Lu Yang calls the avatar a digital reincarnation: DOKU is based on a high-tech face scan of the artist’s own face, capable of reproducing expressions with almost 100 per cent accuracy.

Photo by Betty Krag
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Photo by Betty Krag

Bodil Skovgaard Nielsen, Dagbladet Information kultur / December 3 2021
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Bodil Skovgaard Nielsen, Dagbladet Information kultur / December 3 2021

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Sif Itona Westerberg: 'THE LEGACY - of Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen' at Den Frie Udstillingsbygning

Sif Itona Westerberg is one of the 10 contemporary artists participating in the exhibition THE LEGACY - of Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen at Den Frie Udstillingsbygning.

The exhibition runs from November 26 2021 - March 6 2022

From the Press release:
Legacy can be a source of inspiration and it can also be a burden. Regardless, legacy is a transgenerational principle by which the past materialises in the present and influences the realm of possibility here and now. Legacy can also be a choice. An artist can choose to engage in dialogue with works created in a different time and context. In such cases, the past not only influences the present – the opposite is also true. The works created today inform our approach to and understanding of historical works and artists.

THE LEGACY – of Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen presents new works by Nanna Abell, Nina Beier, Hannah Heilmann, Sophia Kalkau, Marie Lund, Rasmus Myrup, Tal R, Jytte Rex, Torben Ribe and Sif Itona Westerberg, who poetically and intriguingly frame the work of Danish sculptor Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen (1863-1945) in the context of our time.

In their respective practices, the artists consider Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen’s oeuvre on various planes, including her use of form, themes and motifs, as well as her life and materiality. Taking their starting point in different works, including her famous equestrian statues and never-realised works, the artists explore a broad range of techniques and approaches, from dissolution of hierarchies to conflicting forms and radical changes in scale.

Christine Overvad Hansen - Moderator - Ostrich feathers, bronze, motor -220 x 110 x 90 cm - Holstebro Kunstmuseum 2021
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Christine Overvad Hansen - Moderator - Ostrich feathers, bronze, motor -220 × 110 × 90 cm - Holstebro Kunstmuseum 2021

Christine Overvad Hansen - Hard Coding Soft Tactics - Installation view - Holstebro Kunstmuseum 2021
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Christine Overvad Hansen - Hard Coding Soft Tactics - Installation view - Holstebro Kunstmuseum 2021

Christine Overvad Hansen - Faidra's fury - Sterling silver, sugar & essential olis - 6,5 x 6 x 8 cm - Holstebro Kunstmuseum 2021
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Christine Overvad Hansen - Faidra's fury - Sterling silver, sugar & essential olis - 6,5 × 6 × 8 cm - Holstebro Kunstmuseum 2021

Christine Overvad Hansen - Hard Coding Soft Tactics - Installation view - Holstebro Kunstmuseum 2021
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Christine Overvad Hansen - Hard Coding Soft Tactics - Installation view - Holstebro Kunstmuseum 2021

Christine Overvad Hansen - Proxy - bronze, stoneware, timing belts, motor, stainless steel - 145 x 153 x 115 - Holstebro Kunstmuseum 2021
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Christine Overvad Hansen - Proxy - bronze, stoneware, timing belts, motor, stainless steel - 145 × 153 × 115 - Holstebro Kunstmuseum 2021

Christine Overvad Hansen - Echo - Bronze, stoneware & beeswax - 68 x 32 x 33 cm - Holstebro Kunstmuseum 2021
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Christine Overvad Hansen - Echo - Bronze, stoneware & beeswax - 68 × 32 × 33 cm - Holstebro Kunstmuseum 2021

Christine Overvad Hansen: Solo exhibition 'HARD CODING SOFT TACTICS' at Holstebro Kunstmuseum

We are proud to announce Christine Overvad Hansen's solo exhibition 'HARD CODING SOFT TACTICS' at Holstebro Kunstmuseum

The exhibition runs from November 20 2021 - April 3 2022


From the press release:
Christine Overvad Hansen works with a great sense of both materials and the potential of bodies for change - their transformative power, and the exhanges that constantly take place between scuplute and body. The exhibition operates in the field of tension between the fixed and immutable, and the open and flexible - that which can be manipulated.

The title of the exhibition welds two concepts together:Hard coding is a computer programming term which means that one or more values in a program cannot be changed – the data is embedded directly in the source code or program. These values thus represent unalterable information – static constants in a closed system that do not integrate or interact with external inputs.

Soft tactics, on the other hand, are concrete but subtle manipulation techniques that enable one person to exert a strong influence over another: a kind of gentle power that practically crawls beneath your skin. The works in the exhibition span these two poles: between the static and fixed, and the manipulated transformation – expressed through the materials of the works.

The works in Hard coding, soft tactics form a collection of sculptural personae, each of which tells a story about physical and psychological conditions. They are searching for a community, or attempting to break free from a relationship.
In the encounter between mechanical action repetitions, soft modelled forms in bronze or fired stoneware, textiles and feathers, the works in combination form a narrative about the moment of truth when a fixed pattern of action may perhaps become possible to break. In this way, the works constantly alternate, shift, displace and translate the relationship between bodies, psyche and materiality.

Overvad Hansen’s works are both familiar and strange, often straddling the border between the corporeally experienced and the speculatively fictional. With the body as a central element – both as a recurring theme and as an instrument, means and material in the sculptural process – Hard coding, soft ­tactics presents works that tap into our shared human memory, consumption and accumulating behaviour, and our ways of engaging in social relations and exchanges – as well as, in particular, our way of constructing social codes and norms.

Photo by David Stjernholm
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Photo by David Stjernholm

Photo by David Stjernholm
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Photo by David Stjernholm

Amalie Jakobsen: Solo exhibition 'Cosmic Coastline' at Kunstforeningen Gl. Strand

We are proud to announce Amalie Jakobsen's solo exhibition 'Cosmic Coastline' at Kunforeningen Gl. Strand

The exhibition runs from November 12 2021 - February 20 2022

From the press release:
Mining in space and a growing amount of space debris forming like a planetary ring orbiting planet Earth. Humans are present in outer space today more than ever before.
Do we consider it a threat, and who or what poses a threat?
The Danish artist Amalie Jakobsen presents her solo-exhibition COSMIC COASTLINE at GL STRAND and brings our rapidly growing presence in space up for discussion.

The exhibition is centred around the seemingly paradoxical influences of the space industry on our lives.

With a carefully choreographed landscape of sculptures and animated films, Amalie Jakobsen highlights the growing human presence in space: the growing interest in exploration, mining asteroids, technological development, conflicted by the possible threat of the increased amount of space debris posed by mining, and the accumulation of satellites in planet Earth’s lower orbit.

A series of marble sculptures in various sizes challenge our common notion of materials from outer space, and the space industry’s insatiable hunt for water and valuable minerals from asteroids. At the center of the exhibition, a complex satellite sculpture engages the visitors with an interactive robotic performance, while a two-channel animated video highlights the future perspectives of space technology in poetic and unsettling ways.

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Artissima Art Fair 2021

Gether Contemporary was proud to participate in Artissima Art Fair 2021, featuring works by Rune Bosse and Sif Itona Westerberg

Artissima is Italy’s most important contemporary art fair. Since its establishment in 1994, it has combined the presence of an international market with a focus on experimentation and research.

Galleries from around the world participate every year. In addition to the fair (Main Section, Dialogue/Monologue, New Entries, Art Spaces & Editions), Artissima is also composed of three art sections, headed by a board of international curators and museum directors, devoted to emerging artists (Present Future), drawings (Disegni) and rediscovering the great pioneers of contemporary art (Back to the Future). Starting from 2020 the three curated sections are virtually hosted on the Artissima XYZ digital platform, accompanied in 2021 by a physical collective display within the exhibition pavilion.

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Sif Itona Westerberg: 'Immemorial' Catalogue

We are very happy to present the beautiful catalogue Immemorial - Sif Itona Westerberg that we puplished together with ARoS, in connection with Sif Itona Westerberg's solo exhibition Immemorial this fall.

The catalogue is designed by Spine Studio and edited by Lise Pennington.

Sif Itona Westerberg - Cucnus mourning Pheathon - Aerated concrete, steel bolts, burned wood - 180 x 120 x 5 cm - Immemorial - ARoS 2021
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Sif Itona Westerberg - Cucnus mourning Pheathon - Aerated concrete, steel bolts, burned wood - 180 × 120 × 5 cm - Immemorial - ARoS 2021

Sif Itona Westerberg - Immemorial - Installation view - ARoS 2021
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Sif Itona Westerberg - Immemorial - Installation view - ARoS 2021

Sif Itona Westerberg - Immemorial - Installation view - ARoS 2021
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Sif Itona Westerberg - Immemorial - Installation view - ARoS 2021

Sif Itona Westerberg - Immemorial - Installation view - ARoS 2021
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Sif Itona Westerberg - Immemorial - Installation view - ARoS 2021

Sif Itona Westerberg - House of Dionysus (VI), 2020Aerated concrete, steel bolts - 181,5 x 220 x 7 cm - Immemorial - ARoS 2021
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Sif Itona Westerberg - House of Dionysus (VI), 2020Aerated concrete, steel bolts - 181,5 × 220 × 7 cm - Immemorial - ARoS 2021

Sif Itona Westerberg - Immemorial - Installation view - ARoS 2021
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Sif Itona Westerberg - Immemorial - Installation view - ARoS 2021

Sif Itona Westerberg: Solo Exhibition 'Immemorial' at ARoS

We are very proud to announce that Sif Itona Westerberg will be having her largest to date solo and museum exhibition at ARoS this fall

The exhibition runs from October 1 2021 -January 23 2022

From the catalogue:
ARoS is proud to present the largest museum exhibition to date featuring Danish sculptor Sif Itona Westerberg. Graduating from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 2014, Westerberg was quick to attract attention on the Danish art scene with her iconographic sculpture made of aerated concrete, often based on subjects from Greek mythology. The blend of the mundane industrial material and the refined craftmanship gives rise to a very distinctive contrast that feels simultaneously delicate and monumental. Westerberg's works incorporate references to the carved narrative friezes of antiquity and medieval art's elaborate iconography of fabulous beasts, known to many a Dane from church murals. Based on these historical role models - which include artistic modes of expressions as wel as narrative subjects - Westerberg's art confronts ethical and political issues of her own day. Her works always point to our contemporary era where the boundaries between technology, man and nature seem blurred This Juxtaposition allows her works to become hybrid manifestations, unmooring them from any firm temporality. Instead, they bridge the chasms between the mythological tales of the past, contemporary sci-fi visions and posthuman future.

The exhibition Sif Itona Westerberg - Immemorial is devided into three acts. The first act (House of Dionysus) shows works relating to the mythological figure Dionysus, god of wine and ecstacy.

The exhibitions second act (Swan song) consists of a new series of works exhibited for the first time at ARoS. It is based on the Greej myth of Phaethon, som of the sun god Helios. Phaethon borrowed his farther's sun chariot, but soon lost control of it. The chariot darted high up into the sky, creating the Milky Way in the process, then hurtled down to earth where the scorching sun laid waste to everything.

The exhibition's third and final act (Fountain) consists of works from the series Fountain, which takes its starting point in hybrid creatures from the European Middles Ages and genetically modified laboratory animals created by modern technology.

- Lise Pennington, acting director


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Asger Dybvad Larsen & Christine Overvad Hansen: Duo exhibition 'Traveling Thresholds Among Mundane Mutations' at Viborg Kunsthal

We are proud to announce Christine Overvad Hansen and Asger Dybvad Larsen's duo exhibition Traveling Thresholds Among Mundane Mutations at Viborg Kunsthal.

The exhibition runs from September 24 2021 - Janurary 16 2022

From the press release:
In the exhibition Traveling Thresholds Among Mundane Mutations, the two young contemporary artists Asger Dybvad Larsen and Christine Overvad Hansen work with the idea of ​​an artistic course where materials, concepts and works feed each other and create new perspectives and contexts. Some works will point to physical mechanical and repetitive movements, as in Christine Overvad Hansen's sculptures. Other works will work with the cycle as a methodological approach, which i.a. can be seen in Asger Dybvad Larsen's paintings, which consist of canvas that has been sewn together and cut up time and time again.

The two artists have created both new individual works and the collaboration on new works that together explore the materials' inherent qualities, history and potentials. Concepts and compositions in the exhibition's mechanical sculptures and stitched paintings create connections where boundaries cross each other, merge and emphasize a fruitful artistic development. The exhibition reflects a chain of recurring processes that make up a hermetically sealed system.

Rune Bosse - Hummings - KOES - Museum of art in public places 2021
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Rune Bosse - Hummings - KOES - Museum of art in public places 2021

Rune Bosse - Hummings - KOES - Museum of art in public places 2021
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Rune Bosse - Hummings - KOES - Museum of art in public places 2021

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Rune Bosse - Hummings - KOES - Museum of art in public places 2021

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Rune Bosse - Hummings - KOES - Museum of art in public places 2021

Rune Bosse: 'Hummings' at KOES - museum of art in public spaces

Do stones feel grief? Are they humming?

They did so in KØS large international exhibition, Hummings, which unfolded in Køge's urban spaces and landscapes from 14 Aug - 26 Sep 2021.

Hummings was the pilot edition of a comprehensive international exhibition for art in the public space in Denmark. The recurring exhibition, created on the initiative of KØS in collaboration with Køge Municipality, will serve as an ambitious experimental platform for innovative art in public spaces.

Fiction and poetry took over Køge's urban space when Hummings presented 17 art projects by Danish and foreign artists, writers and thinkers. The exhibition included readings, walks, workshops, performances, architectural and sculptural interventions, as well as video and audio works and installations by leading artists in the field of art in public spaces.

The participating artists were: Jonathas de Andrade, Kerstin Bergendal, Rune Bosse, Ayşe Erkmen, Asunción Molinos Gordo, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Lea Guldditte Hestelund, Jakob Jakobsen, Maider López, Jumana Manna, Olga Ravn, Karin Sander, Christoph Schäfer, SUPERFLEX, Hale Tenger and Héctor Zamora.

The word ‘humming’ covers a wide range of phenomena: from the humming noise produced by machines and the sound of gases seeping up through the earth's tectonic layers, to the humming mating call of the male plainfin midshipman fish or the indistinct sounds of the pre-linguistic. The exhibition Hummings allows us to imagine a new language that connects across species and the human and non-human.

Hummings was about the polyphonic and hybrid and served as a metaphorical tool to explore the possibilities of giving voice to the invisible, silent, oppressed and vulnerable. The exhibition was a call to draw attention to all that is going on unnoticed right in front of us, and that which is not yet defined, finished, or legible.

Through the various works, which i.a. was inspired by the latest research in microbiology and anthropology as well as the social sciences and environmental research, the exhibition creates a space where fiction and reality, culture and nature, science and faith meet, merge or dissolve. Instead of leaning on knowledge production marked by contradictions, the exhibition invited us to make ourselves receptive to a new intertwining of many possible worlds and times.

Finally, Hummings served as a commentary on art in public spaces as a genre in an attempt to connect its history with future expressions.

Geographically, Hummings was centered around Køge Bay: Søndre Havn og Strand, Køge Marina and Tangmoseskoven, which are planted on top of a landfill. Finally, the square, the river banks and the residential area Ellemarken were also included.

2020

Amalie Jakobsen - Suffocated Air - diatome algae powder, steel and primer - 340 Ø x 520 cm - Carrying Capacity -Rådhuspladsen 2020
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Amalie Jakobsen - Suffocated Air - diatome algae powder, steel and primer - 340 Ø × 520 cm - Carrying Capacity -Rådhuspladsen 2020

Amalie Jakobsen - Suffocated Air - diatome algae powder, steel and primer - 340 Ø x 520 cm - Carrying Capacity -Rådhuspladsen 2020
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Amalie Jakobsen - Suffocated Air - diatome algae powder, steel and primer - 340 Ø × 520 cm - Carrying Capacity -Rådhuspladsen 2020

Amalie Jakobsen - Protein - Pigments from insects, aluminium, primer - 240 x 185 x 145 cm - Carrying Capacity - Politikens forhal 2020
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Amalie Jakobsen - Protein - Pigments from insects, aluminium, primer - 240 × 185 × 145 cm - Carrying Capacity - Politikens forhal 2020

Amalie Jakobsen - Protein - Pigments from insects, aluminium, primer - 240 x 185 x 145 cm - Carrying Capacity - Politikens forhal 2020
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Amalie Jakobsen - Protein - Pigments from insects, aluminium, primer - 240 × 185 × 145 cm - Carrying Capacity - Politikens forhal 2020

Amalie Jakobsen - Heat Island - soil from Jakobabad, Pakistan, aluminum, primer - 385 x 100 x 60cm - Politikens forhal 2020
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Amalie Jakobsen - Heat Island - soil from Jakobabad, Pakistan, aluminum, primer - 385 × 100 × 60cm - Politikens forhal 2020

Amalie Jakobsen - Carrying Capacity - Installation view - Politikens forhal 2020
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Amalie Jakobsen - Carrying Capacity - Installation view - Politikens forhal 2020

Amalie Jakobsen - Carrying Capacity - Installation view - Politikens forhal 2020
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Amalie Jakobsen - Carrying Capacity - Installation view - Politikens forhal 2020

Amalie Jakobsen - Ancient Fuel - Carbon pigment, primer, aluminium - 150 x 80 x 50 cm - Carrying Capacity - Politikens forhal 2020
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Amalie Jakobsen - Ancient Fuel - Carbon pigment, primer, aluminium - 150 × 80 × 50 cm - Carrying Capacity - Politikens forhal 2020

Amalie Jakobsen - Carrying Capacity - Installation view - Politikens forhal 2020
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Amalie Jakobsen - Carrying Capacity - Installation view - Politikens forhal 2020

Amalie Jakobsen: 'Carrying Capacity' at Politikens Forhal

Amalie Jakobsen is preoccupied with the relationship between human civilization and the mechanisms of nature in its purest form transferred to sculptural formations that mediate facts and challenge the maximum balance between cosmos and chaos.

The solo exhibition Carrying Capacity at Politikens Forhal consists of four sculptures, all of which are based on the ellipse and in confrontation with gravity and our worldview. Here, stringent shapes and colors unite in time and space with a personal insistence on a new world order, where we humans become the change we want for ourselves and the future of the planet. The title of the exhibition, Carrying Capacity, is a technical term used by experts to assess how large a population a city or area can carry before it collapses.

Three sculptures, brightly colored with red minerals from insects, black meteor earth and sand taken from the warmest place measured on the planet, occupy the exhibition space in Politikens Forhal. The exhibition's largest sculpture, painted with powdered algae, enters into a dialogue with its surroundings and the air of the Town Hall Square. As abstractions or graphs illustrating a series of natural phenomena, the works point to some of the greatest challenges of our time, visualized via the blue-green Diatom algae, which is central to the air we breathe; the light sand from the world's hottest city, Jakobabad in Pakistan; the synthetic black meteor earth, extracted from mining in space; and the red pigment from insects, which heralds the protein-rich food of the future.

With this exhibition, Amalie Jakobsen points to a central contemporary theme, thematizing human over-consumption of nature's resources and a constant urge for development. The works appear as markers of these issues, or perhaps as straightforward predictions of what the future will bring.

Amalie Jakobsen (b. 1989) graduated from BA in Fine Art Goldsmiths University, London, in 2014 and has since exhibited in Johannesburg, Mexico City, Chicago, London and Copenhagen. She lives and works in Berlin.

oVo / Birk Bjørlo og Lea Gulditte Hestelund - oVo - Installation view - Huset for Kunst og Design Holstebro 2020
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oVo / Birk Bjørlo og Lea Gulditte Hestelund - oVo - Installation view - Huset for Kunst og Design Holstebro 2020

oVo / Birk Bjørlo og Lea Gulditte Hestelund - oVo - Installation view - Huset for Kunst og Design Holstebro 2020 (Detail)
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oVo / Birk Bjørlo og Lea Gulditte Hestelund - oVo - Installation view - Huset for Kunst og Design Holstebro 2020 (Detail)

oVo / Birk Bjørlo og Lea Gulditte Hestelund - oVo - Installation view - Huset for Kunst og Design Holstebro 2020
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oVo / Birk Bjørlo og Lea Gulditte Hestelund - oVo - Installation view - Huset for Kunst og Design Holstebro 2020

oVo / Birk Bjørlo og Lea Gulditte Hestelund - oVo - Installation view - Huset for Kunst og Design Holstebro 2020 (Detail)
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oVo / Birk Bjørlo og Lea Gulditte Hestelund - oVo - Installation view - Huset for Kunst og Design Holstebro 2020 (Detail)

oVo / Birk Bjørlo og Lea Gulditte Hestelund - oVo - Installation view - Huset for Kunst og Design Holstebro 2020
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oVo / Birk Bjørlo og Lea Gulditte Hestelund - oVo - Installation view - Huset for Kunst og Design Holstebro 2020

oVo / Birk Bjørlo og Lea Gulditte Hestelund - oVo - Installation view - Huset for Kunst og Design Holstebro 2020 (Detail)
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oVo / Birk Bjørlo og Lea Gulditte Hestelund - oVo - Installation view - Huset for Kunst og Design Holstebro 2020 (Detail)

Christine Overvad Hansen - Traders - Installation view - Huset for Kunst og Design Holstebro 2020
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Christine Overvad Hansen - Traders - Installation view - Huset for Kunst og Design Holstebro 2020

Christine Overvad Hansen - Symplegma - aluminum, sterling silver, leather, magnets, sandwashed silk - 45,8 x 195 x 105 cm
Traders - Huset for Kunst og Design Holstebro 2020
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Christine Overvad Hansen - Symplegma - aluminum, sterling silver, leather, magnets, sandwashed silk - 45,8 × 195 × 105 cm

Traders - Huset for Kunst og Design Holstebro 2020

Christine Overvad Hansen - Bad desire (incognito mode) - White concrete, leather, stainless steel - 211 x 166,5 x 145 cm
Traders - Huset for Kunst og Design Holstebro 2020
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Christine Overvad Hansen - Bad desire (incognito mode) - White concrete, leather, stainless steel - 211 × 166,5 × 145 cm

Traders - Huset for Kunst og Design Holstebro 2020

Christine Overvad Hansen - Drudge - Aluminium, steel bullet, super magnet, motor, stainless steel, hair plugs, wax, lambskin
Traders - Huset for Kunst og Design Holstebro 2020
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Christine Overvad Hansen - Drudge - Aluminium, steel bullet, super magnet, motor, stainless steel, hair plugs, wax, lambskin

Traders - Huset for Kunst og Design Holstebro 2020

Christine Overvad Hansen - Traders - Installation view - Huset for Kunst og Design Holstebro 2020
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Christine Overvad Hansen - Traders - Installation view - Huset for Kunst og Design Holstebro 2020

Christine Overvad Hansen - Augur - Aluminium, pigment, sterling silver, water, stainless steel - 194 x 65 x 53,5 cm
Traders - Huset for Kunst og Design Holstebro 2020
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Christine Overvad Hansen - Augur - Aluminium, pigment, sterling silver, water, stainless steel - 194 × 65 × 53,5 cm

Traders - Huset for Kunst og Design Holstebro 2020

Christine Overvad Hansen - Bad desire (incognito mode) - White concrete, leather, stainless steel - 211 x 166,5 x 145 cm
Traders - Huset for Kunst og Design Holstebro 2020
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Christine Overvad Hansen - Bad desire (incognito mode) - White concrete, leather, stainless steel - 211 × 166,5 × 145 cm

Traders - Huset for Kunst og Design Holstebro 2020

3 x soloudstilling på HFKD: Christine Overvad Hansen, Silas Inoue og oVo / Birk Bjørlo & Lea Gulditte Hestelund

CHRISTINE OVERVAD HANSEN
Traders

Christine Overvad Hansen works with sculpture in a broad sense. Her works are often based on traditional sculptural materials and techniques, combined with mechanical elements, performance and materials sourced from the more mundane, such as cosmetics and home and clothing textiles. For her exhibition at HFKD titled Traders, she has produced a number of sculptural works, all of which revolve around themes such as relationships and exchanges. With an eye for the exhibition space and the viewer's bodily interaction with the works, the works unfold narratives of both the exchange of, and the (unfulfilled) pursuit of assets, information or affections.

oVo / BIRK BJØRLO &
LEA GULDDITTE HESTELUND.
oVo

oVo is both the name of the artist duo consisting of Lea Guldditte Hestelund and Birk Bjørlo, as well as the title of this exhibition, which is the first major institutional exhibition the couple has created together. Together, they have created a site-specific installation that, through several different spatial tactics, encloses and affects the viewer's body. Large metal sculptures, at once load-bearing and connected by a naturally colored felt fabric, extend towards the light from the windows up above the work. The whole room is bathed in pink light and the temperature in the room is high and tightly embracing. As a whole, the exhibition produces a feeling of being inside a superorganism, where the individual works are in common dependence on each other, and where care is a basic condition.

SILAS INOUE
eat & becʘ̃me

Silas Inoue’s practice is based on an idiosyncratic approach to nature and man, and how these concepts are inextricably linked. In his work with drawing, sculpture and installation, Inoue combines analytical world observations with intuitive and imaginative expressions. The sculptural works often contain food, and touch on themes such as evolution, future ecologies, technologies and infrastructures. In the exhibition eat & becʘ̃me, Inoue has given thought to the nutritional aspects of his practice, and to how consumption is related to becoming. With living mould fungus, sugar immersed in frying oil and drawings of hyper-exotic gourmet dishes, Inoue builds a mood revolving around modern vanitas motifs that spring from thoughts of growth and decay in a globalized world.

2019

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Rune Bosse - Stien eller Tid Mellem Træer - Installation view - Overgaden 2019
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Rune Bosse - Stien eller Tid Mellem Træer - Installation view - Overgaden 2019

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Rune Bosse - Stien eller Tid Mellem Træer - Installation view - Overgaden 2019
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Rune Bosse - Stien eller Tid Mellem Træer - Installation view - Overgaden 2019

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Rune Bosse: Stien eller Tid Mellem Træer

Overgaden is pleased to present The Trail or Time Between Trees, the first major solo exhibition by the Danish artist Rune Bosse. Since his graduation from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2016, Rune Bosse has created installations and sculptural works with themes such as time, space, relations, and interconnectedness through experiments with, and studies of, ecological processes and the mutual relations of living organisms. To accommodate the exhibition, parts of the building has been dismantled to provide the right conditions for plants and greenery to develop undisturbed outside the control of the institution. The exhibition is a hybrid total installation somewhere between art and natural science, a tribute to the forest, the transformative powers of nature, and sheer fascination with its ungovernable forces.

For The Trail or Time Between Trees, Rune Bosse has conducted a number of preliminary studies in a forest in the southern part of Zealand, which has functioned as part laboratory and part studio and whence soil and plants have been fetched and brought to Overgaden. The laboratory has been recreated in the first gallery space, presenting sculptures of curved ivies, intricate tree roots, as well as flasks and test tubes containing samples of different types of forest material in various stages of development. On the table are scientific encyclopaedias, while sketches and drawings record the artist’s present and future experiments with the growth direction of trees. The laboratory shows Rune Bosse’s attempts at gaining control of, and manipulating with, the forest to gauge its reactions and to understand it as an entity.

The exhibition reflects a positive view of the future and perception of nature rather than a prophecy of doom moving towards the ultimate end of everything: in the forest, organic life is mutually interdependent in a relationship where contrasting renewal and decay are dissolved and linked in a circular continuum. The trail through the exhibition is not a dead end, but suggests a circular shape where repetition and immersion almost take on a ritual, performative, or meditative character. The trail may appear endless, reminiscent of the linguistic term ’going round in circles’ or ‘going about mindlessly’, or perhaps looking to the future as in ‘finding the way forward’ or ‘treading one’s path’. In Rune Bosse’s own exhibition poem The Trail or Time Between Trees, being in the forest is described as an open declaration of devotion. Perhaps it is the relationship with the forest that will enable us to perceive a new way forward?

Rune Bosse (b.1987) graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2016, combining this with studies at Olafur Eliasson’s experimental art school, Institut für Raumexperimente, Berlin. Bosse’s shows include the group show Festival of Future Nows at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, in 2014, EXTRACT at the exhibition venue Kunstforeningen GL Strand, Copenhagen, in 2017, the AROS Triennial The Garden also in 2017, and the exhibition Jordforbindelser (Down to Earth) at Fuglsang Kunstmuseum in 2018.

Sif Itona Westerberg - Fountain - Installation view - Tranen 2019
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Sif Itona Westerberg - Fountain - Installation view - Tranen 2019

Sif Itona Westerberg - Fountain - Installation view - Tranen 2019
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Sif Itona Westerberg - Fountain - Installation view - Tranen 2019

Sif Itona Westerberg - Fountain - Installation view - Tranen 2019
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Sif Itona Westerberg - Fountain - Installation view - Tranen 2019

Sif Itona Westerberg - Fountain - Installation view - Tranen 2019
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Sif Itona Westerberg - Fountain - Installation view - Tranen 2019

Sif Itona Westerberg - Fountain - Installation view - Tranen 2019
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Sif Itona Westerberg - Fountain - Installation view - Tranen 2019

Sif Itona Westerberg - Fountain - Installation view - Tranen 2019
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Sif Itona Westerberg - Fountain - Installation view - Tranen 2019

Sif Itona Westerberg - Fountain - Installation view - Tranen 2019
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Sif Itona Westerberg - Fountain - Installation view - Tranen 2019

Sif Itona Westerberg - Fountain - Installation view - Tranen 2019
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Sif Itona Westerberg - Fountain - Installation view - Tranen 2019

Sif Itona Westerberg - Fountain - Installation view - Tranen 2019
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Sif Itona Westerberg - Fountain - Installation view - Tranen 2019

Sif Itona Westerberg: 'Fountain' at Tranen

Creatures composed of different animals were once the domain of mythology. Today, such creatures are cultivated by the very same modern science, which systematically has challenged religious worldviews, superstition and the existence of supernatural beings. Chimeras no longer simply designate the kind of fire breathing mythological creatures, composed of lion, goat, and snake, which we find on ancient Greek pottery. Since the 20th century, the concept also applies to mixing cells from different animals within biology and genetic research.

Hybrids and relics are recurring themes in the work of Sif Itona Westerberg. In her installation Fountain, the Danish artist processes historical representations of composite creatures at a time when such creations no longer simply bear witness to a bygone era. Itona Westerberg’s hybrids, carved and shaped in aerated concrete panels, are based on imagery from legends and myths. Her sculptures are a reminder of what human imagination is capable of. However, what human beings could only dream of, describe and depict in medieval times, is now something researchers actively work on creating and bring to life. In recent years, international researchers have carried out a series of controversial laboratory experiments. In the USA, researchers have injected sheep embryos with human cells with the declared goal of growing human organs for transplantation. In China, monkey brains have been enriched with human brain cells – an experiment whose purpose critics question. CRISPR gene editing, which allows for cutting and pasting DNA strings, is but one among other new technologies that open up vast possibilities of manipulation of existing fauna and flora.

Itona Westerberg’s installation does not present itself as futurology about new biotechnology or eco-systems. Her work is rather a meditation on the metamorphoses of life from mutations in the primeval soup to the journey from water to land towards gene modification and manipulation of plant and animal species. However, in this exhibition there is no chronological timeline from past to present to future. Remnants from different time periods wildly weave in and out of each other. The exhibition, which takes the form of a fountain, is built around medieval hybrid creatures that spew water out of their mouth. The water is collected in tubs of polyester, which contain fabricated deposits of trilobites extinct 252 million years ago next to scientific visualization models of DNA strings. The water is pumped back via hoses through pipes of aluminum, which has found application within everything from construction work to design since the 20th century. If the exhibition is contemporary art, it is however not solely a picture of our specific moment in time.

The title word ‘fountain’ is derived from the Latin word for spring or source. Fountain marks not so much where something comes from but rather wherefrom something continually flows. In Itona Westerberg’s work, hybrids and chimeras aren’t treated as obscure mythological creatures, which science and enlightenment once discarded as mere fiction, but as creations that new research endows with new life.

The creatures which Itona Westerberg has carved in aerated concrete are sourced from adornments of cathedrals and scripts. In medieval times, illuminated manuscripts – where text is framed by ornaments and images – teemed with hybrid figures. While the text was considered holy, the margin allowed for profane and pagan fantasies of fabulous beings contrary to the Christian teachings of distinct species anchored in an eternal God-given world order. Today, when humans are equipped with ever more advanced prostheses, implants, and speculations about homo sapiens as but one step on the road towards a post-human future, hybrids are once again objects of indignation and fascination.

The exhibition is accompanied by a selection of fiction and non-fiction books curated by Itona Westerberg. The books have served the artist as inspiration during the making of Fountain and additionally serve the public as alternative points of entry into the exhibition.

Toke Lykkeberg
Director of Tranen

2024

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Sif Itona Westerberg in 'Shades of Daphne' at Kasmin Gallery, New York

Kasmin is pleased to present Shades of Daphne, a timely survey of painting, sculpture, installation, and film by a group of 11 international and intergenerational contemporary artists, many of whom have not previously exhibited in the United States. Bringing together recent and historical works spanning over three decades from the 1990s to the present, the exhibition includes new commissions, site-specific performances and installations that respond to the architecture of the gallery space.

Celebrating the spirit of resistance and revolt, the exhibition takes the figure of Daphne—the Ancient Greek nymph who turned herself into a laurel tree to escape Apollo’s pursuit—as metaphor to explore work that engages with hybrid figures, metamorphoses, and suspended states of becoming. Highlighting deconstructed impressions of the body in relation to mythologies of transformation, the exhibition focuses on work that features remnants of presence even when the figure is absent—objects that hold the memories of living things. Acting as portals, thresholds, and containers of shifting states, each work also engages with architecture as a framework, both in reference to the body and to spaces constructed for both personal and collective ritual.

The exhibition features Diana Al-Hadid, Theodora Allen, Ali Banisadr, Bianca Bondi, Brendan Fernandes, Barbara Kasten, Lap-See Lam, Zoë Paul, Ana Pellicer, Naama Tsabar, and Sif Itona Westerberg.

Sif Itona Westerberg (b. 1985, Copenhagen, Denmark) reworks Classical imagery in this new series of patinated bronze sculpture and reliefs carved from aerated concrete. Staged by drapery, the flora and figures are depicted in a state somewhere between formation and dissolution. Stretching longingly in their quest to break the barrier of their form, the tentacle-like limbs of the woman in the sculpture and primordial flowers position us as extras in nature’s drama of life, death, birth, sexuality, and longing.

Shades of Daphne is curated by Stephanie Cristello.

Text by Stephanie Cristello:
Friezes of aerated concrete, engraved in shallow reliefs, depict chimeric figures in mythographic scenes that frame various sculptures of fountains. In the work of Sif Itona Westerberg, streams of water spout from the mouths of hybrid creatures. Instead of hands, they have wings, claws, or hooves—appendages that also carve (into the air, into the earth). Etching into the entablature, the artist’s hand performs the same act as inscribing text. Here, the stone holds images of fictional beings instead of words. Then again, the beasts that once decorated illuminated medieval manuscripts—fantasies of bodies transformed into ornamentation—were used to compose the capital letters at the beginning of a tale. In Christian tradition, text was considered holy (the word of God), while monsters could live in the margins. Centuries later, genes are now spliced, grown, and manufactured in laboratories. As scientific advances progress, the promise of hybridity—playing with the ‘hand of God’—seems not only possible, but imminent. Itona Westerberg’s fountains picture fragments of post-human future as guided by our own hand.
In his book Gestures, Vilém Flusser describes: “Writing does not mean bringing material to a surface but scratching at a surface, and the Greek verb graphein proves it.” Itona Westerberg scratches images into surfaces to craft the language of hybrid forms—between the animal, the plant, the body.