Animals in Art
ARKEN Museum of Modern Art, Ishøj
March 21 – August 9, 2020 UPCOMING: Arken following the recommendations from the Danish authorities regarding the Coronavirus. The museum is therefore closed until further notice.
Featuring sculpture, installation, paintings, video and photography by thirty-four international artists, Animals in Art forms a sensuous, thought-provoking and engaging menagerie. For example, you can come face to face with a life-sized floating elephant, watch YouTube cats playing atonal piano pieces by Arnold Schönberg and take a fresh look at the artificial environments created by zoos.
ARKEN MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
Skovvej 100, 2635 Ishøj
arken.dk
ARKEN Museum of Modern Art, Ishøj
March 21 – August 9, 2020 UPCOMING: Arken following the recommendations from the Danish authorities regarding the Coronavirus. The museum is therefore closed until further notice.
DANIEL FIRMAN
Nasutamanus, 2012
Courtesy the artist & Perrotin
Camels and kittens, elephants and rats, feathered creatures and cute pets. ARKEN invites visitors to enter the animal kingdom of art, a realm filled with beautiful, strange and incredible creatures. The exhibition Animals in Art presents works by thirty-four international artists who explore our relationship with animals – and do so with humour, wit and bite.
In recent years, the relationship between humans and animals is widely explored in contemporary art. The exhibition Animals in Art delves into various aspects of this huge field, which includes critical takes on human manipulation of animals as well as cheerful celebrations of animals as wonderful creatures.
LISA STROMBECK
Uniform I, 2008-9
Photo (c) Lisa Strömbeck
Animals in Art explores how we humans use, look at, talk about and anthropomorphise animals. We are regularly seduced by adorable animals on the shelves of toy stores and on the internet; we love our pets and look for the human in them – or for the animal in ourselves. Animals are everywhere in our fables, adventures and mythologies, where we attribute human language and behaviour to them. We are fascinated by wild animals when visiting them at the zoo or in museums, and we tamper with the natural development of species, with the environment and with biodiversity when we produce animals industrially and fiddle with DNA, the building blocks of life. The exhibition offers many different takes on how we see and understand ourselves through other animal species. For example, it explores ‘cuteness’ as a pervasive phenomenon in our consumer and entertainment culture, influencing how we put animals into categories and assess their value.
WILLIAM WEGMAN
Looking Right, 2015
Photo (c) William Wegman
CANDIDA HOFER
Zoologischer Garten Paris II 1997
Photo (c) Candida Höfer
Featuring sculpture, installation, paintings, video and photography by thirty-four international artists, Animals in Art forms a sensuous, thought-provoking and engaging menagerie. For example, you can come face to face with a life-sized floating elephant, watch YouTube cats playing atonal piano pieces by Arnold Schönberg and take a fresh look at the artificial environments created by zoos.
KOHEI NAWA
PixCell-Deer #44, 2016
Photo: Omer Tiroche Gallery
DAVID SHRIGLEY
Untitled (Lay An Egg), 2019
Courtesy the artist and Galleri Nicolai Wallner
Inside ARKEN’s 150-metre long exhibition space known as the Art Axis, the museum presents fifteen feathered polar bears created by Italian-born artist Paola Pivi. For this presentation, called We are the Alaskan tourists, Paola Pivi has replaced the polar bears’ familiar thick, white fur with light, brightly coloured summery feathers, directing our thoughts away from the harsh climate of Alaska towards southern skies and the carnivals of Brazil. The polar bear is known as The King of the Arctic; a powerful and majestic beast. Today, however, the polar bear has also become a symbol of a dystopian future. It leads an uncertain existence in territories now threatened by climate change. Perhaps this flock of tourists have sought refuge at ARKEN. Adapting to the current climate of our planet, they have replaced their warm fur with frothy feathers.
PAOLA PIVI
It’s not fair, 2013
Photo: Guillaume Ziccarelli
Courtesy the artist & Perrotin
PETER HOLST HENCKEL
World of Butterflies, 1992-2002 (detail)
Courtesy the artist
The exhibition Animals in Art presents works by Cory Arcangel, John Baldessari, Richard Barnes, Pascal Bernier, Sophie Calle, Mircea Cantor, Maurizio Cattelan, Mark Dion, Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg, Martin Eder, Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset, Annika Eriksson, Daniel Firman, Laura Ford, Douglas Gordon, Damien Hirst, Peter Holst Henckel, Camille Henrot, Candida Höfer, Carsten Höller, Bharti Kher, Paul McCarthy, Kohei Nawa, Rivane Neuenschwander & Sérgio Neuenschwander, Tim Noble & Sue Webster, Patricia Piccinini, Paola Pivi, David Shrigley, Lisa Strömbeck and William Wegman.
Skovvej 100, 2635 Ishøj
arken.dk
