I must admit that I approached Nikolaj Kunsthal with equal parts curiosity and scepticism to see the exhibition Breaking Darkness, which treats Lars von Trier’s films as visual art. The idea itself seems obvious enough, as his visual craftsmanship has always been undeniably strong. Who among us does not have seared onto our retinas Von Trier’s images, such as the violent destruction of Earth and other existential horrors? Von Trier knows how to create visuals, no doubt about that. But can these images step out of the screen and become art in their own right?
Breaking Darkness presents Von Trier in an “expanded field,” as the saying goes – via an array of media where different contributors interpret and rework elements of his oeuvre. The exhibition includes installations, props, film clips, snippets of sound, and stills from five films created by the beloved provocateur between 1991 (Europa) and 2011 (Melancholia). The whole thing is presented via wall labels written by literary scholar Lilian Munk Rösing, who assigns overall themes such as love, evil, humour, and tragedy to the various exhibition spaces.
The ground floor is dedicated to Von Trier’s apocalyptic film Melancholia (2011). A large blue planet is projected onto a round piece of fabric high up at the deep end of the former church nave. The prelude from Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde (1859) plays, competing fiercely with the noise from two wind machines blowing on either side, making the thin fabric bulge and giving the planet of death a bit of three-dimensionality. In the church space, tableaux (created by, among others, the fashion brand Solitude Studios) based on the film have been installed. A large banquet table is set up as a chaotic baroque still life, while the main character Justine’s wedding dress is harshly illuminated, with plant roots entwining the white fabric. The staging is taken directly from Melancholia’s ultra-slow-motion sequences –symbolist vignettes that, in the film, almost become paintings, laying out the metaphorical meaning in provocatively thick layers.
In the middle of the room is a wooden structure, a kind of tipi, with seating inside. It is a rather brutal beam-based version of the magic cave that Justine builds from branches as a refuge for the poor child who is to die along with the rest of the world. In the film, the cave has a distinct sculptural quality, especially in the stark contrast between the fragile bundled branches – and the fact that the Earth is about to have a rogue planet smash into it. Here, this otherwise powerful scenographic element has been scaled up to become a rather overgrown shelter – presumably so that several people can sit inside it at the same time, in an attempt to conjure up a frisson of anxiety.
Von Trier has had nothing to do with the exhibition as such, merely stating in the press release: “I, Lars von Trier, hereby give the exhibition my blessing.” Fortunately, the auteur’s mythomania remains intact. However, the curators have collaborated with numerous others, including the film company Zentropa, set designer Phillip Sacht, and cultural entrepreneur Jens Otto Paludan, who has lent the impressive, printed film stills hanging on all the walls – stills that Paludan also sells under the trademark Art von Trier. Yes, you heard that right. This presentation certainly caters to fan culture, but it feels like a somewhat desperate and
The stairwells leading up to the venue’s upper levels are dedicated to Europa (1991), and feature walls covered in dark fabric, atmospheric black and white projections, and a small model train with film stills in each carriage – all accompanied by the hypnotic voice of Max von Sydow, guiding visitors into a dystopian Europe. Later, Breaking the Waves (1996) gets its turn – a film I have never seen, which perhaps makes the installation all the more remarkable for me. Large projections of the film’s characters appear on fabric hanging from the ceiling; a moped is parked inside the space, and small TVs on stools show the enchanting Scottish landscapes where the film takes place. It’s simple and strange in a good way.
Set against the rough aesthetics of the upper floors, the whole experience feels somewhat akin to stumbling into a peculiar city museum in one of the minor European capitals and watching random aspects of history unfold – an exhibition created without much of a budget, but with a great deal of love and make-do-and-mend practical effects. And that is touching in itself, even if the films’ artistic idiosyncrasies are drowned out somewhat in the installation remix.
Once upon a time, film history was made in Denmark with the Dogme 95 wave as its flagship and Von Trier at the helm, dividing opinion between those who could stomach his brilliant manipulation and those who were repelled by it. Criticism of the films’ transgressions was hushed in defence of the idea of great, free art. However, one contribution to the exhibition offers a structural critique of the films: Sofie Riise Nors’s graphic novel Monolog Kaffe (Monologue Coffee, 2025), which, with incisive humour, completely tears apart Von Trier’s work. This includes the misogynistic patterns in his films, which all too often involve a woman ending up dead as a consequence of her sexuality in a patriarchal world. Riise Nors’s work is thorough and well argued, but it stands very much alone in an exhibition that leans more towards being a tribute to Von Trier.
The exhibition tries to do rather too much: inform, advertise, celebrate, and then offer a bit of critique, too. This baroque tactic is difficult to get to grips with. What if all the explanatory material, film stills, and clips had been stripped away, leaving only the staged installations? Might sensory echoes of the films and a hardcore version of the Verfremdungseffekt that Von Trier often uses in his own work constitute a kind of visual art in itself? Melancholia as a malignant planetary tumour (with Wagner and the noise of blowers in the middle of the church space) has a certain potential in this regard, but, alas, none of the requisite existential unease. Especially not when the magical cave feels rather more like a remote countryside shelter than a metaphysical refuge.
On the other hand, perhaps the problem with the exhibition is precisely that extracting visual art from the director’s rather grandiose tendencies can only go one way – scaled down – unless you happen to have a EUR 10 million budget and access to an oil rig with a thousand opera singers. But perhaps we nevertheless glimpse in the exhibition’s very gesture of self-destruction a hint of Von Trier’s diabolical glint – the suggestion of something that is not meant to succeed and, indeed, cannot. But I would say that the goodwill must extend further than the countryside shelter if this exhibition is to be understood as a Gesamtkunstwerk in itself.
