Tora Schultz, File, Palace Enterprise, Copenhagen
There was much to love about Tora Schultz’s small, tightly conceived exhibition. For someone who writes, like myself, one aspect was how concisely she uses the power of language in her otherwise sculptural works. A secretary desk – another name for a bureau, a piece of furniture used to keep things in – stood with all its drawers open while the diaries it once contained hung as closed bronze fragments on the walls. The secrets had burnt away in the casting process, becoming more secret than ever, while the stripped/-ing ‘secretary’ stood entirely exposed, ready to obey orders.
Julia Selin, Julia Selin knows nothing about the trees, Matteo Cantarella, Copenhagen
Speaking of language, the award for best title of the year goes to Swedish artist Julia Selin for her exhibition: Julia Selin knows nothing about the trees. It showed a series of large, dark paintings in smouldering reddish hues depicting trees of a kind – or perhaps the tree’s aura, its energy, or its skeleton in a sort of shimmering X-ray. Selin employs a technique where she removes the thick layers of paint from the figurative areas, causing the work to end up as a reversed relief. An absent tree we cannot get to grips with because, as we know, Julia knows nothing about trees.
Brian Kure, Nordic Waste, AGA, Copenhagen
In a cellar space underneath the AGA artist collective, Brian Kure created a brilliant gem of an exhibition consisting of rather dubious paintings. The works – kitschy landscape paintings in heavy gold frames – were purchased at auction following the bankruptcy of the soil remediation company Nordic Waste. They told a paradoxical story about the scandal-ridden company’s view of nature. Yet in their sublime rose coloured idyll, they also conveyed how the green capitalism we hope will save the climate and our national budgets alike might not be worth more than a bunch of paintings that look as if they were bought on Temu.
Louise Steiwer is a regular contributor to Kunstkritikk. She is a trained art historian and has contributed to a range of publications, most recently to the monograph on Apolonia Sokol published by Forlaget Aftryk.
