At the press viewing of Alexander Tovborg’s The Church, Kunsthal Charlottenborg’s Director Michael Thouber proclaimed, in almost ritualistic fashion, “from this day forth it will be our church,” and thanked the artist for “opening our hearts and our house… as they say in church.” “How can we keep the faith in these times?” he continued, referring to the global crises that threaten the very existence of humanity. Things are looking bleak, but luckily salvation is just around the corner. Perhaps. Inside Charlottenborg’s large south wing, Tovborg presents his largest solo exhibition to date, as though exclaiming: “the church is so small! My church is a spaceship!” Or shouting: “We must go into space and look for Father.”
This question is a common thread running through the exhibition. But are we talking about daddy Tovborg or God the Father? As a matter of fact, a childhood conversation between Tovborg and his own father about where God, who is in heaven, goes when it’s daylight, led him on an imaginary journey full of spaceships and extra-terrestrial civilisations that continues to influence him today. With my background as a historian of religion, I also recognize in his search for “Father” the theological notions of the Christian God as hidden (Deus absconditus) or withdrawn (Deus otiosus).
The Church is arranged as a basilica with a central nave and aisles, and the number of rooms corresponds to the seven days of Creation, testifying to a desire to, through selected events from the Book of Genesis in particular, facilitate a mystical progression for the viewer. On the back wall of the nave hangs a huge triptych of the Garden of Eden, mirrored by a meticulously executed painting with a wooden cross affixed to the frame, hanging near the entrance. It would seem reasonable to think that Tovborg is referring to the Christian connection between the Tree of Life and the cross on which Christ was crucified.
Wood is a recurring material in The Church. Tovborg paints on solid wooden panels covered with pieces of fabric, evoking icon painting and Christ the carpenter. Speaking of icons, The Church has a notable absence of gold, a popular material in Orthodox and Catholic Christianity. However, if we look carefully, all the gold is gathered in one place, on the back of Teenage Jesus (2022), suspended so that it can be viewed from both sides. A critique of Christian greed or a reference to the doctrine of Jesus as both man and God?
Behind the basilica hides The Church’s sacristy, a sacred backstage area. The corner rooms are dominated by large painted apples whose leaves align with the curvature of the fruit. The shape of the leaves suggest that someone may have bitten into the apples, a subtle touch that makes us uncertain whether we find ourselves before or after the Fall. This is just one of many small Easter eggs that elevate The Church from the realm of instruction and preaching to a more playful experience – provided we take the requisite time and are familiar with the source material. The very fact that there are two apple rooms painted in different shades is also a riddle. The Book of Genesis mentions not only one tree reserved exclusively for God, but two: The Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge.
In the middle is the room Beatrice (“the blessed one”), which contains a single, enormous painting. Here we meet a curious figure consisting of circles and eyes, which I suspect represents one of the so-called Ophanim: angels who guard the throne of God and never sleep. The sacristy is shut off, without windows. An invitation to a world beyond the world, God’s secret chamber and the Garden of Eden – perhaps before the Fall.
In the right aisle we find the room Noah (after the flood) (2023). The motif is important for Tovborg’s Church – and a clue to where Father might be hiding. When lit up by sunlight, the stained-glass panes reminiscent of church windows make a rainbow that links up the exhibition spaces and suggests the presence of God. In Genesis, the rainbow is the sign of God’s covenant with Noah: a promise never to exterminate humanity again – after He just did.
For many people, however, the rainbow is not associated with its Old Testament history, but rather is known as the symbol of the Pride movement and the right to freely choose and express one’s identity – something which Christian conservatism made impossible in the past and still makes difficult for many. It is also a symbol of the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution, as exemplified by Isaac Newton’s experiments refracting white light into different wavelengths using a prism. However, none of these illuminations are clearly evident in Tovborg’s rainbow. Instead, we get Noah’s God, who promises to stop committing genocide (a promise He does not keep).
After the Flood, Noah falls asleep naked after an epic bender and is discovered by his sons. Shem and Japheth cover him up, but Ham sees Noah’s nakedness, causing Noah to curse him. As the three sons were perceived as the ancestors of all later people on earth, with Ham as the ancestor of the inhabitants of Africa, the idea of the so-called “Curse of Ham” was used, among other things, as an argument to justify slavery. In The Church, we do meet the naked, drunk Noah, but unfortunately Tovborg does not delve deeper into the myth. The rainbow remains a sign of the divine that sets the rooms awash with a lovely light, while the underlying tale of an angry God who kills everyone is conspicuous by its absence. We must settle for the rainbow à la Noah, leaving issues of body shaming and racial thinking unaddressed.
Immanuel Kant defined “enlightenment” as “the emergence of human beings from their self-imposed immaturity.” Visiting The Church, my experience was the complete opposite: a glossy, saccharine version of selected biblical scenes. With The Church, Tovborg (and art) moves further away from Kant’s ideal of enlightenment. In the video Welcome to the Mystery on Charlottenborg’s website, Tovborg speaks about the ‘mystery’ as something that can only be understood by accepting its terms: “It’s something that you cannot understand. If you agree to that then you’re welcome to the mystery.” No room for critical thinking here.
Tovborg appears radical, but the truly progressive aspect of his project seems to be that it rests on a reactionary foundation. His gospel tempts us with salvation from the hyper-material, enticing us with the promise of a moment of respite in our hectic everyday lives where we always have to perform. But is it a gospel that addresses everyone – “to the Jew first, and also to the Greek” as Paul the apostle wrote in Romans? The Church will probably appeal mainly to the more affluent, those already familiar with Christianity and Charlottenborg. Those who inhabit the upper floors of the Tower of Babel that is Maslow’s pyramid.
Tovborg encourages us to visit the exhibition several times and, paradoxically, this is where his most revolutionary contribution can perhaps be found: in offering a critique of the rushed art experience. We should approach the exhibition in the manner of regular worship in church, a space we visit regularly to seek peace and contemplation. Sadly, that message is somewhat drowned out by the weight of Christian aesthetics. It is possible that the objective here is to create a Church of Art rather than church art, but that particular spaceship does not quite manage lift-off. Instead of a trip into space, we end up inside a room where the light from outer space may well shine in, but only to create an illusory and protected world that does not relate to real-world problems. The Church is a pleasant place to be, but it quickly becomes constricting.
The Church opened right in the middle of international Pride month, and viewed in this light Tovborg’s rainbow seems rather monochrome. Whereas Newton’s prism showed that white light contains all the colours of the rainbow, Tovborg’s ecclesiastical rainbow – however brightly coloured it wants to be – illuminates Charlottenborg with a predominantly white, upper-middle-class light. A light that threatens to blind us, if we look too long.
– Tao Thykier Makeeff, b. 1978, is a researcher and culture writer. Graduated Mag. Art. in Religious Studies from the University of Copenhagen and Ph.D. in history of religion from Lund University. Affiliated with Lund University and the University of Stavanger.
