Carnegie Art Award 2008
Den Frie Udstillingsbygning is an art institution established in 1891 by a union of artists with the concerted purpose to provide an alternative to the aforementioned censured Forårsudstilling at Kunsthal Charlottenborg. Characteristic for the artists was that they had the courage to revolt against tradition and the existing art world, and soon, Den Frie gained a reputation as an experimental lab for young and progressive artists as well as a venue, where one could experience Danish art at its best.
Recently, Den Frie hosted the Carnegie Art Award 2008 exhibition, where 26 Nordic artists presented 65 pieces, mainly consisting of oil on canvas, photography, sculptures and film. Winner of the prestigious award is Swedish Torsten Andersson, who works with two-dimensional configurations of three-dimensional objects. Thus, he has created his own language within art, where the two-dimensionality steps out of the flat paintings and enters into a close proximity with the viewer. Runner up is Danish Jesper Just. Just has especially received acknowledgement for his narrative films charged with a seductive and magic imagery, which explores the scopes of identity and human relations. The narrations take place in diverse settings, paying homage to different film genres such as the musical, drama and film noir. Jesper Just perennially succeeds in creating a dense and intimate atmosphere as well as a distinct area of tension between subject and object. Third prize winner is John Kørner, also Danish, who, with his open attitude towards painting and its traditions, primarily works within the world of painting. His characteristic and expressive paintings are often incorporated in complex installations or orchestrations, which includes the viewer within the piece.
Other interesting works in the Carnegie Art Award exhibition, which will be on view in Iceland from June 19, are Danish Ellen Hyllemose, who challenges the meeting between the everyday and the exceptional. Her exhibited works are montages of medium-density fiberboards, painted and covered with richly colored lycra, laying a filter between the work and the gaze of the viewer. Remarkable is also Danish Allan Otte, who employs a special technique including tape and spray paint to create oddly realistic landscape paintings. His points of departure for the motives are images found online and then digitally processed. Otte’s settings are empty, however still include the trace of human activity. And then there is Danish Ferdinand Ahm Kragh, who, a bit like Parson the New School for Design in New York-student, Lars van Dooren, works with formal compositions and drawings of a difficultly defined space. His drawings, which consist of parallel, thin lines, drawn with pen or pencil and a ruler on paper, either center on a utopian architecture, an abstract, futuristic landscape or a visualization of sound. Ahm Kragh’s works seem flawless, but when you take a closer look, you’ll see that all lines aren’t perfectly linear, which adds energy to the works.
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EXIT and Enter
I’ve already mentioned that one way to catch up on the contemporary Danish art scene is to get a glimpse of Forårsudstillingen at Charlottenborg, but another and maybe even more obvious starting point may be the creative and innovative EXIT 08 exhibition at Kunsthal Gl. Strand, which presents works from this year’s graduation students from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art, thus emphasizing their entry into the enormous world of art.
Currently in its 12th year, EXIT 08 showcases works from 24 students and although it may not all be international, the exhibition certainly does rouse and entertain the viewer. There are three floors, each presenting its own dynamic layout and connection between the exhibited pieces, resulting in three overruling themes, which let the works extend beyond the exhibition and into our memory and social consciousness. And regardless of the fact that EXIT 08 is a student exhibition, the themes are universal and pivotal in contemporary art. Thus memory is regarded as a reenactment of motives from the past as a reflection on the present; art as social conscience has flourished since the 90s; and the longing to break down the institutional nature of art is desire inspired by the modern avant-garde movements in the 1920s.
Art & Arms
Controversial and highly provocative Danish artist Kristian von Hornsleth has established a new artistic and capitalistic project, Hornsleth Arms Invest Corporation, HAIC, which challenges the border between art and reality; it sells weapon shares as artwork and donates half of the profit to a charity fund. The shares are priced $4,000 each and by making a purchase, you will not only be a co-owner of HAIC, but also be kept responsible for begging children with amputated limbs, brainwashed young men holding Kalashnikovs, and subsequently contributing to creating a charity fund based on blood money.
Each share is decorated with fighter planes, cluster bombs, nuclear arms, vultures, naked ladies, and carry the inscription Per Ruinam ad Humanitatem (”via ruin to humanity”), which is also the title of his exhibition on view at Gallery Poulsen Copenhagen until June 18th. The project focuses on one of the free market economy’s moral dilemmas and Hornsleth says that the idea indeed originates from a fascination of how the stock market works, and how this market shares mechanisms with the art world. The project succeeds in turning our morality upside down and the interesting thing is not whether it’s actual art, but whether it’s interesting as art. And although I’m very ambivalent as to what to make of the weapon shares, I think the project is interesting, as Hornsleth touches on one of the big moral dilemmas of the free market economy. In an impudent and cynic way, HAIC points at connections between war and profit and between charity and profit, which we tend to keep separate. I do, however, also locate a fundamental problem in the project in case Hornsleth’s project adds to the actual weapon sale.
Barthes revisited: photographic experiments
Our exposure to the photographic image on a professional as well as a private level has steadily increased since the first photograph saw the light of day in 1839. The photographic medium has become a natural part of our everyday life and has changed our whole way of seeing and perceiving. We have grown accustomed to photography so that our decoding of it happens unconsciously. Nevertheless, there are still some photographies that for some reason talk to us and make us stop in order to more closely examine what it is in the particular photograph that affects us, thereby separating it from the enormous amount of graphic material we are exposed to daily.
Photography appears to be a fundamental form of communication, yet it still seems difficult to define. The perception and the theorization of photography and its context is placed in a paradoxical field and for a long time, the discussion was based on whether photography could be defined as art, rather than exploring the core of its meaning. However, if you’re trying to catalogue the theoretical intersection surrounding photography, there are two main directions, namely the formalist essentialism and the discourse of analytic contextualism. While Walter Benjamin is an proponent of the first and John Tagg for the latter, Roland Barthes, although predominantly essentialist, performs between these two theoretic polarities. In Camera Lucida (1980), Barthes develops themes such as proximity and distance, the relationship between photography and theatre, history and death. He identifies the exchange of meaning between the photography and the viewer and mentions two elements, which he thinks are present in a successful photography, studium and punctum. While studium is the reflection of the relationship between the obvious symbolic meanings of a photograph, punctum, is the personally touching detail within it, which establishes a direct relationship with the photographed object or person.
With this in mind, I was impressed as well as surprised a few days ago when I attended the opening of the exhibition Here I never wander alone at the Co-Lab gallery in Copenhagen.
Rebirth of Danish art and design
If you want to keep track of modern Danish art and design, Forårsudstillingen at Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen is a pivotal point of departure. Yesterday was the final day of the annual censored exhibition, where artists like Per Kirkeby and Olafur Eliasson once had their debut, and I went there to catch a last glimpse of the exhibition’s proposition as to what the Scandinavian art scene will look like in the years to come. In its 151 year-history, Forårsudstillingen obviously draws on a number of traditions and codes of practice; however, a new and substantial initiative has been introduced this year, triggering critics to designate it a rebirth and a mall-like ornamentation. The 2008 exhibition has been curated much in line with the direction of the art scene in general, where hierarchies between different art directions are loosened, juxtaposed, and discussed.
Chief curator is the internationally acclaimed, New York-based designer Karim Rashid, who is responsible for the overall design and title of the exhibition, 21. With this title, Rashid lets the exhibition leap into the twenty-first century, where the boundaries between art and design become increasingly vague. Therefore, this year’s exhibition offers fashion, graphic design, and sound art aside from the more traditional genres of architecture and visual arts—all indicating renewal and a relation to our current social, political, spiritual, and technological development. Karim Rashid’s own aesthetic expression is present throughout the exhibition, not only in the selection and composition of the works, but also in the separate works that have been placed on walls covered with his colorful, digitally designed wallpapers, manifesting the unity of the exhibition as a whole.
