Esben Weile Kjær, Hardcore Freedom, Copenhagen Contemporary, Copenhagen
It has long been clear that art and exhibitions increasingly live through their representation on social media, in images, films, and commentary tracks. Long before I actually saw Esben Weile Kjær’s Hardcore Freedom at CC, I had seen a deluge of footage of performances, enthusiastic comments, and super-inviting pictures. With his stylish installations and performances, Weile Kjær strikes a chord that blends a sense of longing with a deep melancholy: longing for the collective body of the nightclub scene and the transcendence of the self; the melancholic sense of absence when the party is over and the exhibition is left unmanned. On the wall, Tinkerbell appears in bright neon, promising entry to Neverland. But the problem is that in Neverland you never grow up.
Tomás Saraceno, Event Horizon, Cisternerne, Frederiksberg
In recent years, the Frederiksberg Museums have created one of Copenhagen’s most exciting exhibition spaces in the form of Cisternerne, set in a former water reservoir in Søndermarken. Here we leave the upper world behind to delve down into another dimension. Adapted and reworked by Saraceno, the setting has become a fabulously suggestive space where mirrors, architectural forms, and the artist’s signature cobwebs are all elements in a dreamlike journey to a land outside of time and space. With his exploratory, science-based, and unusually beautiful works, Saraceno questions our human-centric outlook on the world. What happens if we let the animals take centre stage instead? The question quietly echoes through it all as we slowly glide through the work in a rowboat.
Kristian Zahrtmann, Queer, Art and Passion, The Hirschsprung Collection, Copenhagen; Fuglsang Kunstmuseum, Guldborgsund; and Ribe Art Museum
One of the year’s best and most fun surprises was the Kristian Zahrtmann (1843–1917) show, which I saw at the Hirschsprung Collection. The exhibition succeeded in doing what the major Masculin show presented at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris in 2013 failed to achieve: to posit the homoerotic within the subjects chosen by the painter, and those of the era in general. Zahrtmann can certainly be said to embody the belle époque on Danish soil. In the eyes many observers, especially present-day ones, his images are poised somewhere between art and kitsch. They do, however, offer us a rare peek into the Herman Bang-esque salons found on the threshold of the 20th century, an era we usually tend to associate with L.A. Ring and Realism. There was something truly uplifting about seeing a different kind of gaze applied to the big city, and about getting an opportunity to contemplate gender and sexuality on the basis of Zahrtmann’s early modern works.
– Mads Damsbo holds an MA in art history from Copenhagen and Johannesburg. He is the director of Artcenter Spritten, a brand-new art venue due to open in Aalborg in 2023.
For this year’s contributions to Kunstkritikk’s Advent Calendar, see here.
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