Alex Da Corte, Mr. Remember, Louisiana, Humlebæk
Alex Da Corte has no aesthetic inhibitions. He’s a hard worker, and his imagination never fails him. There’s the recipe for art superstardom! But in contrast to most of his contemporaries, Da Corte understands what everyone understood in the Middle Ages: to make art is to tell a good story.
Albin Werle, Masquerade, Galleri Maria Friis, Copenhagen
I was very moved to discover Albin Werle’s generous and intricate game installation at the Danish Royal Academy degree show in 2018, which otherwise mostly showed young art totally ready for the market. That Werle landed in a gallery is thus an ironic act of fate. But it’s just the kind of act of fate that we can find in his games.
Lee Lozano, The Ultimate Metaphor Is a Mirror, Kunstforeningen Gl. Strand, Copenhagen
Lee Lozano’s drawings feel like they were made by a friend – a friend I can’t completely get my head around because she’s so much smarter than me and she’s got an infinitely richer imagination. But her way of drawing and her ability to put her platoons of iconography into action hit me right in the heart. Lozano’s drawings are inviting and intimate, while at the same time in your face. They are laid-back while being utterly precise. They are political and disarmingly absurd. They are impossible to completely figure out, and so rawly beautiful it hurts. Like a Södergran drunk on Nietzsche, or a Munch drunk on Munch, Lozano knows the art of being everything and still completely herself. Indeed, her drawings are primers on being oneself. It’s painful to read in the show that Lozano – long before she died – chose to end her art making.
Olof Olsson is a performance artist based in Copenhagen.
For this year’s contributions to Kunstkritikk’s Advent Calendar, see here.
