“The Future is Female.” Written on t-shirts, this proclamation could be seen all over Copenhagen a few years ago. And judging by this year’s autumn exhibition programmes in Denmark, it certainly looks as if that future is upon us. The vast majority of this season’s interesting institutional solo shows are created by women artists, particularly the very young and the hitherto overlooked older ones. Meanwhile, the middle generation – those who graduated in the late 1990s and early 2000s – remains rather more invisible. Perhaps this reflects some sort of institutional midlife crisis?
As has become customary, the season opens with a bang this week as the two major Copenhagen-based art fairs take place. Relocating from Nordhavnen to the former locomotive workshop at the city’s Central Station, the international Enter Art Fair appears to have consolidated its position as the one attracting the major Copenhagen galleries – such as Nils Stærk, Nicolai Wallner, and Gas9 – while the Chart Art Fair has caught hold of the younger Nordic gallery scene with the new initiative Please Notice. Looking at the roster of artists presented at the two fairs, one senses that the future has also finally reached the until now rather male-dominated commercial scene. This year, we note an almost equal representation of men and women among the artists featured. Hooray!
Following in the wake of the fairs, the Copenhagen institutions have put on their glad rags and popped the champagne. The vast majority of the season’s most notable exhibitions open this week, which makes even just planning your routes and stops around the city’s many private views enough to send your head spinning. The rest of the autumn looks rather more quiet. Making an early start, Gl. Strand opened American artist Rachel Rose’s show last Wednesday, including a series of works in which she illustrates the earth’s development through the eons by means of staged arrangements of her children’s toys. The National Gallery of Denmark (SMK) launched Jessie Kleemann’s major solo exhibition Running Time, which discusses international power politics, climate change, and the colonisation of Greenland in works that forge connections extending from traditional Greenlandic culture by way of colonial goods to present-day commodities. With Kleemann at SMK and Inuuteq Storch representing Denmark at the Venice Biennale this spring, it seems that the complicated Danish-Greenlandic relationship has finally moved into the centre of the art scene.
Kleemann’s large-scale SMK exhibition coincides so closely with her show at Rønnebæksholm as to be intentional, if not even a collaboration. The pairing between Arken’s autumn exhibition featuring French-Polish-Danish artist Apolonia Sokol and Overgaden’s Sokol show (a duo with Siham Benamor) in the early spring of 2024 seems less deliberate. Although such exhibitions can undoubtedly cross-pollinate and mutually reinforce each other, one nevertheless senses a whiff of samey uniformity, redolent of an insular art scene that very often seems to look in the exact same direction for inspiration. In Sokol’s case, tracing the source of this shared fascination is quite straightforward: it points back to Lea Grob’s 2022 documentary film Apolonia, Apolonia, which won a slew of awards worldwide. At Arken, the selection of Sokol’s works focuses on portraits of the artist’s friends, colleagues, and allies, who were often women, queer people, and BIPOC from the funkier parts of the Parisian art milieu.
There are also plenty of women at Den Frie, which has once again revisited the institution’s history to revitalise the 1920 Women Artists’ Retrospective. Many of the more than seven hundred works featured in the original exhibition have disappeared since then, and so curator Anna Weile Kjær has invited a group of present-day women artists to explore how one might work with a historical exhibition whose material objects have long since been lost. Kunsthal Charlottenborg will also take a stroll down memory lane this autumn as it celebrates its 140th anniversary with an exhibition curated by the Copenhagen-based duo South into North (Francesca Astesani and Julia Rodrigues). There is a certain sassy boldness in inviting two curators who are admittedly very familiar with the Copenhagen scene, yet still bring a much-needed outside perspective, to delve into the archive to unearth colourful stories and forgotten angles.
Leaving aside the current interest in overlooked women artists – a trend also apparent in in Kunstmuseum Brandt’s current Kiki Kogelnik show and Sorø Kunstmuseum’s upcoming exhibition with Kirsten Kjær – it is as if the artists are getting younger and younger every year. The tendency is most evident on the gallery scene, which used to be cautious about taking in completely fresh graduates. Until a few years ago, that is. A range of young galleries – Lagune Ouest, C.C.C. Gallery, Alice Folker, and Palace Enterprise – lead the way, but more established gallerists clearly also attend the degree shows.
Galleri Nicolai Wallner, currently showing freshly graduated artist J.G. Arvidsson, has undergone quite the rejuvenation in recent years. Now, the gallery has figures such as Anna Kristine Hvid Petersen, Eva Helene Pade, and Maja Malou Lyse on its books. Andersen’s has also expanded its portfolio with Martin Brandt Hansen, Melanie Kitti, and Esben Weile Kjær. A similar trend can be observed in the institutions, where special treats ahead include: Cassie Augusta Jørgensen’s solo show at Overgaden; Samara Sallam’s exhibition at Platform in Nikolaj Kunsthal; and Ida Raselli at Horsens Art Museum.
In terms of staffing, the museum directors’ game of musical chairs seems to have been resolved. With Astrid la Cour in place at SMK, Maria Gadegaard in the director’s chair at The Fredriksberg Museums, and Mai Dengsøe as acting director at Gl. Holtegaard, it is time to look forward. However, during the summer holidays, Gl. Holtegaard revealed that Rudersdal Municipality has decided to withdraw its operating subsidy for the venue from 2024 – in spite of growing visitor numbers and critically acclaimed exhibitions. This is dire news for the institution, which has turned to social media to urge the public to protest. We second that call.
Another institution under pressure is Kunsthal Aarhus, where Diana Baldon has just resigned from her position as director after only a year and a half at the helm. It was a surprising announcement from Baldon, whose primary impact on the art gallery’s profile appears to be Simon Dybbroe Møller’s award-winning exhibition, still on display until October.
Speaking of awards and accolades, this year there will be special reason to pay attention to the British Turner Prize ceremony in December: Ghislaine Leung has been nominated for her exhibition at Simian in Ørestaden, which sees the venue once again proving that trailblazing and agenda-setting exhibitions do not necessarily take place at the big institutions. This week, it will reopen with Canadian painter Aleksander Hardashnakov and a group show curated by Brazilian artist Wisrah Villefort, whose show at Goswell Road in Paris remains one of my personal highlights of 2020. Art is in full bloom out there, most lushly and prolifically among the younger protagonists on the scene.
