Marguerite Humeau @ ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art, Ishøj - "Torches" Exhibition

Marguerite Humeau: Torches

ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art, Ishøj

Through 19 October 2025

Marguerite Humeau, 2024 

Photography by Eoin Greally 

Image courtesy of the artist

Marguerite Humeau 

‘Torches’ at ARKEN Museum, 2025 

© Marguerite Humeau 

Photography by Mathilde Agius

Courtesy of the artist

Marguerite Humeau 

‘Torches’ at ARKEN Museum, 2025 

© Marguerite Humeau 

Photography by Mathilde Agius

Courtesy of the artist

In the immersive exhibition Torches, French artist Marguerite Humeau creates a richly affective opera that spans across time and space, asking questions about our shared origins and alternative futures. Sound and light bring Humeau’s sculptures and installations to life, weaving a complex and evocative narrative. Her works incorporate many unconventional materials, including beeswax, wasp venom, yeast and cyanobacteria, also known as blue-green algae.

In the exhibition Torches, the internationally acclaimed French artist MARGUERITE HUMEAU (b. 1986) invites us to rethink our past, present and future here on Earth – and guides us through the darkness with her art. Conceived as an opera, the exhibition presents the artworks in an array of interlinked acts, using sound and light as mainstays of the other-worldly narratives that have won Marguerite Humeau international acclaim. She is also known for incorporating unusual materials in her art, with examples including hand-blown glass, waxed felt, laser-cut steel, silk, and even yeast. The exhibition at ARKEN also presents a work featuring an ecosystem of cyanobacteria that will continue to multiply during the exhibition run. 

Curator Sarah Fredholm explains the exhibition title, Torches, by pointing out that ‘the works, embodying characters, are like torches in the dark. They point towards new connections between all living things across time and place and show us the way ahead,’ she says and continues: 

‘Even though the point of departure of Marguerite Humeau’s work is our crisis-stricken planet, there is still hope to be found. Her art shows us that we can still find fresh starts and new beginnings; all we need to do is to imagine other ways of existing, ways that are more closely attuned to the rich variety of the rest of life on Earth.’

Marguerite Humeau 

‘Torches’ at ARKEN Museum, 2025 

© Marguerite Humeau 

Photography by Mathilde Agius

Courtesy of the artist

Marguerite Humeau 

‘Torches’ at ARKEN Museum, 2025 

© Marguerite Humeau 

Photography by Mathilde Agius

Courtesy of the artist

Marguerite Humeau 

‘Torches’ at ARKEN Museum, 2025 

© Marguerite Humeau 

Photography by Mathilde Agius

Courtesy of the artist

Marguerite Humeau’s works ask thought-provoking questions: What if elephants had become the dominant species on Earth? What would the world look like if we co-operated like ants or bees? Or if life could only be sustained high up in the atmosphere? Torches shows us new perspectives to marvel at and possibly learn from. 

Says curator Sarah Fredholm: ‘With her art, Marguerite Humeau offers up alternative narratives about possible ways of co-existing here on Earth; ways where humankind does not take centre stage and where the boundaries between lifeforms, time and place are fluid and open to renegotiation.’   

For the first time ever, Torches brings together all-new and earlier works by Marguerite Humeau. It is also the artist’s first solo show in Scandinavia. Furthermore, Torches constitutes the third and final part of ARKEN’s exhibition series NATURE FUTURE, in which prominent figures on the international art scene focus on humanity’s relationship with art, nature and technology. The previous instalments in the series were Refik Anadol’s Nature Dreams (2023) and Julian Charrière’s Solarstalgia (2024–25).

Marguerite Humeau was born in 1986 in Cholet, France, and lives and works in London. She holds an MA (2011) from The Royal College of Art, London. Her past exhibitions include solo shows at ICA Miami (2024), Lafayette Anticipations, Paris (2021), Kunstverein Hamburg (2019), Museion, Bolzano (2019), New Museum, New York (2018), Tate Britain, London (2017), and Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2016). 

The exhibition Torches is presented in co-operation with the Helsinki Art Museum (HAM), where it will subsequently be shown. 

ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art

Skovvej 100, 2635 Ishøj

www.arken.dk

Marguerite Humeau: Torches

ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art, 22 May - 19 October 2025

Michelangelo Imperfect @ National Gallery of Denmark, SMK, Copenhagen

Michelangelo Imperfect

National Gallery of Denmark, SMK, Copenhagen

Through 31 August, 2025

Facsimile after Michelangelo Buonarroti

Active Life (Leah). Original 1542–44,

facsimile 2024–25

The Royal Cast Collection, SMK – 

National Gallery of Denmark. Photo: SMK

Facsimile after Michelangelo Buonarroti 

Genius of Victory Original c. 1519-26, 

facsimile 2024-25

The Royal Cast Collection, SMK –

National Gallery of Denmark. Photo: SMK

Plaster cast after Michelangelo Buonarroti

Bacchus. Original c. 1496-97, cast c. 1874-79

The Royal Cast Collection, SMK – 

National Gallery of Denmark. Photo: SMK

He painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, designed the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, and his sculptures are known worldwide. SMK presents the most comprehensive display of Michelangelo Buonarroti’s sculptural work seen in 150 years.

If one were to point to a single artist who has contributed fundamentally to the modern perception of art as self-expression in Western culture, it would be the Italian artist Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564). His iconic statue David shows us why.

Viewed from the left, the almost five-metre-tall figure is a classically idealised, alert young man ready for battle – but when seen from the other side he changes expression, revealing doubt and hesitation. Michelangelo insisted on reflecting the often conflicted and contradictory inner lives of his figures. He was not the first to do so, but he did it with such consistency that it changed the course of art.

A bronze David and thirty-nine other sculptures reproduced after Michelangelo can be seen at the National Gallery of Denmark (SMK) in Copenhagen in the exhibition Michelangelo Imperfect. Not since the celebration of the 400th anniversary of Michelangelo’s birth in Florence in 1875 has so comprehensive a selection of the artist’s sculptural production been gathered in one place.

Plaster cast after Michelangelo Buonarroti 

Brutus. Original 1540 or 1548, cast 1897 

The Royal Cast Collection, SMK – 

National Gallery of Denmark. Photo: SMK

Plaster cast after Michelangelo Buonarroti

Day (Giorno). Original c. 1525-26, cast 1897

The Royal Cast Collection, SMK – 

National Gallery of Denmark Photo: SMK

Plaster cast after Michelangelo Buonarroti 

Head of David. Original 1501-1504, cast 1890

The Royal Cast Collection, SMK – 

National Gallery of Denmark. Photo: SMK

Michelangelo’s focus was almost exclusively on the human body, especially the male form, in which he found endless scope for expressing thoughts, emotions and tensions. He invariably strove for greatness, reaching for the impossible. Already in his lifetime, he was described as ‘il divino’ – the divine. But his art also revolves around the imperfect, the unfinished and the fragile; around being in a state of becoming, anxious, wavering and hesitating. This is apparent in his biblical, mythological and allegorical subjects alike.

‘This is the impossible exhibition: You would never be able to gather Michelangelo’s original sculptures in one place. But with SMK’s collection of historical reproductions in plaster and newly produced facsimiles of the highest quality, we are able to present a perhaps imperfect, yet strikingly complete, overall account of a body of work that changed art forever and remains remarkably poignant today,’ says the exhibition’s curator, Matthias Wivel.

The basis for SMK’s exhibition is its exquisite collection of historical casts after Michelangelo sculptures in the Royal Cast Collection. Most of these were commissioned and cast in 1895–98 for the then-new National Gallery of Denmark (today SMK). Some were added in the twentieth- and early twenty-first century. The collection encompasses the majority of Michelangelo’s most famous sculptures.

Cast after Michelangelo Buonarroti

Head of David. Original c. 1501-04, cast 1890

Photo from the Royal Cast Collection, SMK – 

National Gallery of Denmark

Cast after Michelangelo Buonarroti

The Dying Prisoner. Original c. 1513-14, cast c. 1852–70

Photo from the Royal Cast Collection, SMK – 

National Gallery of Denmark

In order to get as close as possible to a complete presentation of the Renaissance master’s sculptures, SMK complements these historical plaster casts with newly commissioned and -produced 3D-modelled and cast sculptures – so-called facsimiles – produced in Madrid by Factum Foundation, world leaders in the production of facsimiles, reconstructions and rematerialisations of artworks.

This enables SMK to bring together under one roof reproductions of masterpieces that in the original are located in many different places and with only a few exceptions are never moved, either because they are too fragile to travel, too difficult to move, or, quite simply, too culturally significant. The exhibition also includes original sculptural models (maquettes), drawings, and letters from Michelangelo’s own hand.

‘This [is] a unique opportunity to experience Michelangelo’s sculptural art as a whole. At the same time, it offers a chance to reflect on the role played by reproduction and copying in art and in our understanding of art. Reproductions have always been part of the way we create and perceive art, but have been somewhat neglected in a museum context in recent times. We see great potential here,’ says the exhibition’s curator, Matthias Wivel.

In connection with the exhibition, SMK is publishing a comprehensive and richly illustrated catalogue that presents new research and unfolds themes from the exhibition – including an exploration of the relationship between original and copy, as well as a challenge to the distinction between the finished and the unfinished, the perfect and the imperfect.

NATIONAL GALLERY OF DENMARK

SMK - STATENS MUSEUM FOR KUNST

Sølvgade 48-50, 1307 Copenhagen

www.smk.dk

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Gauguin & Kihara @ Glyptotek, Copenhagen - "Gauguin & Kihara – First Impressions" Exhibition

Gauguin & Kihara – First Impressions

Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen

8 May, 2025 - 6 December 2026

Paul Gauguin

Vahine no te Tiare. Woman with the Flower, 1891

MIN 1828 © Glyptoteket

Paul Gauguin

Arearea no Varua ino. The Amusement of the Evil Spirit, 1894

MIN 1832 © Glyptoteket

Throughout his career, Paul Gauguin pursued the ideal conditions for life as an artist. Yet wherever he went, reality seldom lived up to his expectations. When reality fell short, however, imagination was given free rein in his artistic worlds. This is the starting point for the Glyptotek’s upcoming collection presentation, Gauguin & Kihara – First Impressions, which also features an important new acquisition grappling explicitly with Gauguin’s work.

 

The Glyptotek holds one of the world’s finest collections of works by the French artist Paul Gauguin (1848–1903). In recent years, many of the museum’s 58 Gauguin pieces—including paintings, woodcarvings, drawings and ceramics—have been on loan to renowned museums across the globe. Now, they return home to be shown together in a presentation, opening on 8 May, offering new perspectives on Gauguin’s well-known works.

 

This spring, the Gauguin collection is joined by the Japanese-Sāmoan contemporary artist Yuki Kihara (b. 1975) and her video work First Impressions: Paul Gauguin, recently acquired by the museum. Together, their works open a dialogue across time, cultural divides and vast oceanic distances.

Paul Gauguin

Landscape from Brittany with Breton Women, 1888 

MIN 1826 © Glyptoteket

Paul Gauguin

Shepherdess from Brittany, 1889

MIN 1827 © Glyptoteket

 

Paul Gauguin: The eternal pursuit

Gauguin’s futile search for the ideal conditions for an artist’s life took him from Paris to Copenhagen, through Normandy, Brittany and Arles, and onwards to the then-French colonies of Martinique, Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands. When reality proved disappointing, he let his imagination run free, creating artistic worlds on his own terms. ‘Who cares about accuracy!!’ he declared. The Glyptotek delves not only into this artistic journey but also into the physical, political and historical contexts that shaped it, examining how Gauguin depicted the places and cultures he encountered along the way.

Paul Gauguin

Skaters in Frederiksberg Garden, 1884 

MIN 3213 © Glyptoteket

“Gauguin moved through the world in a way not unlike today’s tourists. Like the traveller who crops out souvenir stalls from their holiday photos and seeks out restaurants touted as “hidden gems” in various guidebooks, Gauguin pursued the idea of authenticity, often viewing his destinations through the lens of existing narratives and images. Having spent nearly a decade in the South Pacific, Gauguin may have lived too long in the region to be called a tourist, but this comparison opens a conversation in which Gauguin’s works are not solely a matter of his distinctive colours, uniform surfaces and bold contours. They also offer insight into the cultural, political and social contexts in which they were created, challenging us still today to reflect on our own time. Through what lens do we, as modern-day tourists and cultural consumers, view the world?” says Anna Kærsgaard Gregersen, curator of the French collection at the Glyptotek.

The collection presentation will be shown in the Henning Larsen building, which will, in coming years, house an extensive selection of the Glyptotek’s French collections. This initiative is part of the museum’s commitment to strengthening the presentation of French art and culture, its collection being among the most significant in the Nordic region.

Yuki Kihara: Striking new acquisition

Yuki Kihara (b. 1975)

First Impressions Paul Gauguin, 2018 

© Courtesy of Yuki Kihara, 

the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco,

the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen and Milford Galle

The Glyptotek has acquired a contemporary artwork that offers a modern interpretation of one of Western art history’s most iconic—and most controversial—artists. The new acquisition, and the museum’s first video work, First Impressions: Paul Gauguin (2018), is by the Japanese-Sāmoan contemporary artist Yuki Kihara.

The video work was co-commissioned by the Glyptotek and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. It was previously shown as part of the Glyptotek’s special exhibition Paul Gauguin – Why Are You Angry? (2020), which later toured to Alte Nationalgalerie (2022). That same year, the work was included in the 59th Venice Biennale, where Kihara represented Aotearoa New Zealand. Now, the work returns to the Glyptotek as a newly conceived installation and permanent part of the museum’s collection.

“I remember thinking how strange it was to be in front of [Paul Gauguin’s] paintings, as if time and space had collapsed. Here we were as artists from two different parts of the world having a dialogue in two different moments in history,” says Yuki Kihara, reflecting on her first real encounter with Gauguin’s works.

Presented in the format of a talk show, the video work features a host and panel who are shown reproductions of Gauguin paintings from Tahiti (including two from the museum’s own collection), after which they share their first impressions. As the conversation unfolds, Gauguin fades into the background, giving way to the participants’ own perspectives and speculative stories about the paintings’ models.

 

Both Yuki Kihara and the talk show participants belong to the Fa’afafine and Fa’atama communities, the Sāmoan counterparts to Māhū, a Tahitian term referring to individuals endowed with spiritual gifts from more than one gender. In colonial times, the Māhū were banned by missionaries, but researchers believe that several of Gauguin’s figures may depict Māhū—a theory also discussed among the panel.

“With humour and gravity, Kihara directs the colonial gaze back towards the West, reclaiming her community’s power to shape their own narrative. This acquisition initiates vital conversations across time and place, holding the museum and Western art history accountable, and challenging us to acknowledge historical nuance and the contemporary voices traditionally excluded from discussions surrounding Gauguin’s complex oeuvre,” explains Anna Kærsgaard Gregersen.

YUKI KIHARA (b. 1975) is a Japanese-Sāmoan interdisciplinary artist based in Sāmoa. Her practice seeks to challenge one-sided historical narratives through performance, sculpture, video, photography and curatorial practice. With a particular focus on postcolonial narratives and representation in Oceania, she explores issues of race, gender, power and cultural appropriation. Yuki Kihara represented Aotearoa New Zealand at the 59th Venice Biennale (2022) with Paradise Camp, and she has been the subject of solo exhibitions worldwide, including at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Powerhouse Museum and the Sainsbury Centre. Her works are found in the collections of museums including the Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, National Gallery of Australia and Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand.

Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek

Dantes Plads 7 • 1556 Copenhagen

www.glyptoteket.com

Ursula Reuter Christiansen @ ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art, Ishoj - "I Am Fire and Water" Exhibition

Ursula Reuter Christiansen

I Am Fire and Water

ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art, Ishoj

22 August 2024 - 5 january 2025

Ursula Reuter Christiansen 

Jeg er ild og vand, Installation photo

ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art 

Photo Anders Sune Berg

Jeg er ild og vand Ursula Reuter Christiansen 

Photo Kavian Borhani

Jeg er ild og vand Ursula Reuter Christiansen 

Photo Kavian Borhani

Ursula Reuter Christiansen 

Vred brud (angry bride), 1971

Museum Jorn

The exhibition I Am Fire and Water offers a unique opportunity to explore new works by Ursula Reuter Christiansen and reflect on how we humans navigate a world filled with both hope and despair.

How can we retain our essential humanity in a world where hope and courage are constantly beset by cruelty and despair? What do we do when children are robbed of their lives in war? And how do we say goodbye to this world, poised between love and the abyss?

These are some of the weighty and highly topical questions raised by Ursula Reuter Christiansen – one of Denmark’s most significant living artists – in her installations and paintings in the exhibition I Am Fire and Water.

Says curator Dorthe Juul Rugaard: ‘Ursula Reuter Christiansen is one of Denmark’s greatest contemporary artists. She is a keen observer of the times in which we live, and she uses her art to say important and poignantly relevant things about the world we share while world history is being written before our eyes.’

Over the course of more than six decades, Ursula Reuter Christiansen (b.1943 in Trier, Germany) has enriched the art world with works in which beauty wrestles with the demonic and light meets darkness. Her narrative, expressive, and poetic works reflect the human condition while also speaking directly to the political and climatic crises unfolding in the world right now.

‘Ursula Reuter Christiansen is in a league of her own, and the rest of Europe is beginning to see that too. Her prominence as an artist is matched by her feminist credentials; for example, she was a leading activist of the Redstockings movement in Denmark. As an artist, she has upheld a feminist point of view in her criticism and her outlook on the world,’ continues Dorthe Juul Rugaard.

‘Having said that, Ursula Reuter Christiansen has also expanded her scope and reach beyond the gender debate and is now more concerned with humanity as such: in her art, she embraces our existential conditions on this globe, a world in a state of crisis – not only as regards the climate, but also in relation to atrocities such as the war in Gaza, where the children are the main victims.’

Ursula Reuter Christiansen 

Flüchte, Flige, Entrinne, 2024

Installation photo. 

ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art

Photo Anders Sune Berg

Ursula Reuter Christiansen

Courage, 2023

ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art

Photo Anders Sune Berg 

The exhibition I am Fire and Water is an impressive feat on the part of Ursula Reuter Christiansen, a tour de force that presents installations and paintings from the earliest years of her career in the 1960s to the present day. Brand new works were created especially for the exhibition at ARKEN.

Ursula Reuter Christiansen invites audiences on a journey through seven installations that reflect various facets of life. The exhibition ranges from the colossal installation Rotten Eggs Against Bombs to Washed Out Faces, the latter consisting of white sheets with faces painted onto them: here, trauma and pain have been scrubbed and washed out and the demons hung out to dry. Among the new installations is Es Ist Zu Spät (It Is Too Late), which invites visitors along on the artist’s personal journey through the fog – perhaps ending in a farewell to the world.

ARKEN MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART

Skovvej 100, 2635 Ishøj

www.arken.dk

Vilhelm Hammershoi: Silence @ Hauser & Wirth Basel - Inaugural Exhibition

Vilhelm Hammershøi: Silence 

Hauser & Wirth Basel 

1 June - 13 July 2024

Vilhelm Hammershøi

Double Portrait of the Artist and His Wife, Seen

through a Mirror. The Cottage Spurveskjul, 1911

Oil on canvas, 55 x 76 cm / 21 5/8 x 29 7/8 in

© Vilhelm Hammershøi, courtesy Hauser & Wirth

Vilhelm Hammershøi

Interior in London, Brunswick Square, 1912

Oil on canvas, 53 x 76 cm / 20 7/8 x 29 7/8 in

Photo: Annik Wetter Photographie

© Vilhelm Hammershøi, courtesy Hauser & Wirth

Hauser & Wirth inaugurates its new gallery in Basel at Luftgässlein 4 with the exhibition ‘Vilhelm Hammershøi. Silence’. Curated by art historian Felix Krämer, a leading expert on Vilhelm Hammershøi, it is the first ever solo exhibition of the celebrated 19th- and early 20th-century Danish artist in Switzerland, bringing together 16 works from private collections dating between 1883 and 1914, some of which have rarely been exhibited before. Characterized by their mesmerizing composure and omnipresent minimal color palette, ‘Vilhelm Hammershøi. Silence’ devotes its attention to these genre paintings without narratives and is accompanied by a catalog by Hauser & Wirth Publishers, featuring essays from the curator Felix Krämer and art historian and writer Florian Illies (author of ‘Love in a Time of Hate’ and ‘1913: The Year Before the Storm’).

Alongside the interior paintings for which Vilhelm Hammershøi is highly renowned, including nine works featuring a figure, the exhibition features several of the artist’s early farmstead paintings and cityscapes of Copenhagen and London, as well as a rare self-portrait of the artist with his wife. The quiet but radical originality that emanates from these works situates Hammershøi as a precursor to the modern masters who were to follow, including Giorgio Morandi, Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth. Highlighting Hammershøi’s powerfully prescient vision, Florian Illies writes, ‘The future already spoke through him. More than a hundred years in advance, he intuited the spaces in which our souls now wish to reside.’

Vilhelm Hammershøi’s timeless paintings defy categorization, visually bridging the art of the Old Masters with that of the modern era. Drawing from both the past and his present, Hammershøi created a highly individual artistic language that has captured the imaginations of contemporary audiences from beyond his native Denmark. Major international retrospectives and exhibitions of his work over the last 20 years have been held at The Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK (2008), Kunsthalle München, Germany (2012) and Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art, Japan (2020), among others.

Vilhelm Hammershøi

Interior with the Artist’s Wife, Seen from Behind, 1901

Oil on canvas, 45 x 39 cm / 17 3/4 x 15 3/8 in

Photo: Annik Wetter Photographie

© Vilhelm Hammershøi, courtesy Hauser & Wirth

Vilhelm Hammershøi

Morning Toilette, 1914

Oil on canvas, 87 x 73 cm / 34 1/4 x 28 3/4 in

© Vilhelm Hammershøi, courtesy Hauser & Wirth

Born in Copenhagen in 1864, the son of a merchant, Vilhelm Hammershøi remained loyal to his hometown of Copenhagen where he lived until his death in 1916. Through early travels to the European centers of Paris and London with his wife, Ida Hammershøi, née Ilsted, whom he married in 1891, he familiarized himself with the rapidly evolving international art of his time. Yet, it was Dutch 17th-century genre painting, particularly the enigmatic domestic interiors of Johannes Vermeer, and the early 19th-century Danish Golden Age, that became a wellspring of inspiration for the artist. Following their travels, the couple settled in their 17th-century apartment, Strandgade 30, in the Christianshavn district of Copenhagen, where they would reside from 1898 to 1909. Described by his contemporaries as a recluse, the artist preferred to paint at home rather than in a studio, resisting the influences and distractions of the outside world. Hammershøi’s interior paintings, each depiction imbued with a contemplative stillness, were to remain the artist’s enduring fascination and most renowned motif.

Among the works in the exhibition are major paintings of interiors with a singular female figure, most noticeably depicting Vilhelm Hammershøi’s wife, Ida. Within the interiors that Hammershøi created, Ida repeatedly appears as an isolated figure with her back turned towards the viewer, giving these paintings a timeless quality by denying any sort of emotional or narrative reading. Certain motifs reappear in different configurations alongside his wife, often in an artificial and dream-like manner, creating an inherent tension between the figure and its environment. The uncanny placement of household objects, such as candlesticks, chairs, desks and mirrors, can be seen as evocative of the still life compositions that Giorgio Morandi painted decades later. In the painting ‘Interior with the Artist’s Wife, Seen from Behind’ (1901), Ida stands ambivalently next to a pianoforte; however, there is no interaction between two. The presence of a musical instrument emphasizes the absence of sound, adding to the profound feeling of stillness. These ephemeral interior paintings conjure a voyeuristic intimacy which anticipates the atmosphere of works by 20th-century artists such as Edward Hopper or René Magritte.

Vilhelm Hammershøi

Interior with a Standing Woman, 1898

Oil on canvas, 48.5 x 42.4 cm / 19 1/8 x 16 3/4 in

© Vilhelm Hammershøi, courtesy Hauser & Wirth

Vilhelm Hammershøi

Woman before a Mirror, 1906

Oil on canvas, 46 x 38.5 cm / 18 1/8 x 15 1/8 in

© Vilhelm Hammershøi, courtesy Hauser & Wirth

Vilhelm Hammershøi’s reductive color palette and masterful use of diffused light give the interiors a contemplative, melancholic quality and stand in stark contrast to the bold expressionists and fauvists of his time. In one of the earliest interiors on view, ‘Interior with a Standing Woman’ (1898), the artist experiments with brown and ochre tones seen in his early farmstead paintings. In later paintings, Vilhelm Hammershøi began to employ the grey toned color palette that would come to define his minimal aesthetic, as seen in the work ‘Woman Before a Mirror’ (1906). Although evocative of black and white or sepia photography, his palette was radical since it ultimately alienated his images from realism. Asked about his color use in 1907, the artist replied: ‘Why do I use so few and muted colors? Frankly, I don’t know. It’s quite impossible for me to say anything on the matter. It feels natural to me. In purely coloristic terms I absolutely believe that a painting works best the fewer colors are used in it.’ The seriality of the isolated figure, setting and disconnection from verisimilitude are traits that arguably characterize Hammershøi’s works as precursors to conceptual and modernist approaches.

Many of Vilhelm Hammershøi’s later paintings utilize an experimental approach to perspective, with several works reminiscent of photographic compositions and viewpoints. A rare example of a self-portrait of the artist with his wife, ‘Double Portrait of the Artist and His Wife, Seen through a Mirror. The Cottage Spurveskjul’ (1911) features the artist’s own reflection within the confines of an elliptical shaped mirror, allowing the viewer’s gaze to merge with the artist’s, whilst Ida is distanced from the viewer in the background. ‘Morning Toilette’ (1914) is one of the latest paintings on view featuring the artist’s wife and is in stark contrast to earlier examples; here, Vilhelm Hammershøi crops the figure from the waist upwards. These angular compositions and perspectives imbue the artist’s work with a striking contemporary relevance which, alongside Hammershøi’s use of the figure and color, reveal a remarkably modernist sensibility that continues to garner new generations of followers who join those steeped in the history of art of the 19th and early 20th Centuries. 

HAUSER & WIRTH BASEL

Luftgässlein 4, 4051 Basel

www.hauserwirth.com

Roni Horn: The Detour of Identity @ Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek

Roni Horn: The Detour of Identity

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek

2 May – 1 September 2024

RONI HORN

The Detour of Identity, 1984–85

Gouache on paper/ board

© Roni Horn

Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

RONI HORN

Untitled (Weather) 2010-2011

Detail

© Roni Horn

Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. 

Photo: Alex Delfanne

RONI HORN

Untitled (Weather) 2010-2011

Detail

© Roni Horn

Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. 

Photo: Alex Delfanne

With cinematic art as its prism, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art presents American artist RONI HORN (b. 1955). This exhibition introduces a new approach to photography, drawing and sculpture by one of the most distinctive voices of our time. Iconic scenes from some of cinema’s greatest films form part of the presentation of the artist’s work. In keeping with Roni Horn’s preoccupation with the changing weather – with light and movement – the extensive exhibition is being shown in daylight – natural light – in Louisiana’s South Wing.

“The inspiration Roni Horn takes from film, her fascination for film imagery and the narrative of images, is new ground on which to present her work. Louisiana’s guests will move through the South Wing, crosscutting between Horn’s works and sequences from film, which constitute an active and significant part of the material that has shaped the artist.”

– Poul Erik Tøjner, Louisiana’s Director.

Roni Horn often applies the language and effects of film in her practice, and, as in the world of film, she exploits the tension between the outer world, where the socially defined body predominates, and the inner world of conscious reality, where the body, with its urges and desires, resides. Throughout the exhibition these clips from some of history’s most famous film narratives form a parallel path to Roni Horn’s oeuvre.

There is something very powerful about the work of Roni Horn. Seemingly razor-sharp and cool, it juxtaposes humans and landscape, permanence and changeability, obscurity and transparency in a flow of light, water and weather. Horn tackles themes such as identity and sexuality. Who am I? What does my gender mean? What language do we have to express emotions? Are emotions private? What is the order of nature vis-à-vis humankind?

Her questions are philosophical and fundamental; her answers are tangible works of art. But the works never come across as answers – they are more like quasi facts that require interpretation. Horn does not beg for our attention in order to be permitted to reveal. We must ask ourselves what we are seeing; there is little use in asking Roni Horn because the artist cares little for the notion that we require information before encountering her art. Knowledge, she says, can act as an obstacle to experience.

Identity is the central and recurring theme in the exhibition’s selection of films and film clips – the quest for identity, loss of identity, mistaken or stolen identity, and so on. Each of the films has, on some level, been important to Roni Horn, and therefore each represents another identification, be it with the actions of the character or with the knowledge that organises the film’s narrative and imagery.

The exhibition is an imaginary journey through the artist’s imagery, expanding to include the sense of community that has emerged around many of these celebrated films. A few examples of the film clips in the exhibition are Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and Vertigo, Lars von Trier’s Melancholia, Claude Chabrol’s The Does and Carl Th. Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc.

RONI HORN

Dead Owl, 1997

Detail

© Roni Horn

Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth 

Photo: Bill Jacobson

RONI HORN

Untitled ("My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. 

I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. 

I have often thought that with any luck at all 

I could have been born a werewolf, 

because the two middle fingers 

on both my hands are the same length, 

but I have had to be content with what I had. 

I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. 

I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, 

and Amanita phalloides, the deathcup mushroom. 

Everyone else in my family is dead.") 2012-2013

© Roni Horn

Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Photo: Genevieve Hanson

Roni Horn has been represented in Louisiana’s collection for over twenty years. From some Thames (2000) was acquired for the collection in 2002. Later came the glass sculpture Untitled (“The sensation of longing for an eclipse of the moon.”) from 2013 and the major work a.k.a. (2008–2009), which deals with identity and consists of thirty photographs from Roni Horn’s life, all depictions of her taken by different people over time. The same person is at once both herself and 29 others. It is a beautifully lucid and entirely undogmatic demonstration of how difficult it can be to say exactly who and what someone is; and the fluidity, the things that cannot be captured or fixed – from the weather to the light to water to sexuality, to dreams, to, well, who you are – flows through Louisiana’s exhibition, even in the handsome sculptures of infinitely slowly setting tempered glass that let light play in colours of immense beauty.

RONI HORN - THE DETOUR OF IDENTITY

Published by Steidl / Louisiana Museum of Modern Art

472 pages, 539 images

Otabind softcover, 24.7 x 29.7 cm, English

ISBN 978-3-96999-378-1

The exhibition is accompanied by an international publication (in English) entitled The Detour of Identity. The publication, edited by Jerry Gorovoy, is published in collaboration with Louisiana Museum of Modern Art by the German publisher Steidl and  features texts by Briony Fer, Elisabeth Bronfen and Gary Indiana. Foreword by Poul Erik Tøjner and introduction by Jerry Gorovoy.

The exhibition has been curated by Roni Horn’s long-time friend Jerry Gorovoy, also known as the personal assistant to Louise Bourgeois for four decades, in collaboration with Louisiana’s Director Poul Erik Tøjner.

Louisiana Channel has produced the videos Roni Horn – Saying Water (2013) and Roni Horn – Interviewed by Dayanita Singh (2013). Both are available on Louisiana Channel: https://channel.louisiana.dk/

LOUISIANA MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

Gl. Strandvej 13 - 3050 Humlebæk

louisiana.dk

After the Sun—Forecasts from the North @ Buffalo AKG Art Museum + Gammel Strand, Copenhagen

After the Sun—Forecasts from the North

Buffalo AKG Art Museum

April 26 - August 19, 2024

The Buffalo AKG Art Museum presents After the Sun—Forecasts from the North, a new exhibition that surveys a generational response to the precarious state of our natural environment. Organized by Helga Christoffersen, Curator-at-Large and Curator of the Nordic Art & Culture Initiative at the Buffalo AKG, After the Sun is on view in the new Jeffrey E. Gundlach Building, after which it will travel to Gammel Strand in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Featuring the work of twenty artists with strong ties to Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, After the Sun considers how emergencies at a Northern latitude reverberate globally. The exhibition presents new artistic engagements that build on the Nordic region’s tradition of depicting the natural world, and asks what art is generated in response to the intensifying global climate crisis.

“As the inaugural exhibition of the Nordic Art & Culture Initiative at the Buffalo AKG, After the Sun is a fitting example of the prescient, global projects that define the Buffalo AKG,” said Janne Sirén, Peggy Pierce Elvin Director. “The Nordic Art & Culture Initiative creates an unprecedented international platform for new art and pressing subject matter. We are honored to present After the Sun and to partner with Gammel Strand in Copenhagen to extend the exhibition’s reach across the Atlantic.”

Cathleen Chaffee, Charles Balbach Chief Curator, observed, “This remarkable exhibition envisions the scope of our vulnerability as a species, as we navigate an existence that is increasingly, consistently in extremis. Encompassing artists who approach the pressing subject of climate change from vastly different perspectives, it is a case study for the ways artists can help us see otherwise opaque aspects of life in a time of natural and manmade crises.”

The exhibition’s title is drawn from Danish writer Jonas Eika’s collection of short stories Efter Solen (After the Sun), winner of the Nordic Literature Prize in 2019. Eike has said that the book emerged from a sense of personal and political exhaustion, a feeling that he believes is shared by many: “That the way we imagine the future is mostly just a continuation of what there is today. The future, as a potential for change and a source of political energy, seems to be missing.” 

As Eika’s book addresses the profound challenge of responding to forces that pull us apart, the artists included in After the Sun grapple with how artistic practice may or may not succeed at meaningfully shaping the future world.

Occupying the entire first floor of the Buffalo AKG’s new Jeffrey E. Gundlach Building’s special exhibition galleries along with outdoor space on the museum campus, After the Sun presents artistic responses to the climate crisis that range from the analytical to the speculative, the poetic to the political. Some artists consider the repercussions of temporary solutions to climate change, among them Lea Porsager (born Frederikssund, Denmark, 1981, lives in Copenhagen, Denmark), in whose hands a sequence of massive disused windmill blade fragments become poignant ruins. Amitai Romm’s (born Jerusalem, 1985, lives in Copenhagen, Denmark) slight but throbbing sculptures and sound work are among several in the exhibition to approach science and data related to the environment from a visceral, embodied position. Olof Marsja’s (born Gällivare, Lapland, Sweden, 1986, lives in Gothenburg, Sweden) plant-human hybrid sculptures are contemporary guardian figures, related to indigenous knowledge and the artist’s own Sámi tradition. These, and all the artists in After the Sun explore what a meaningful engagement with nature might mean today and how we might forge practical, theoretical, and metaphysical paths forward.

Participating Artists

Sigurður Ámundason (b. 1986, Reykjavik, lives in Reykjavik, Iceland),  

Felipe de Ávila Franco (b. 1982, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, lives in Helsinki, Finland), 

Á. Birna Björnsdóttir (b. 1990, Reykjavik, lives in Amsterdam, The Netherlands), 

Ragna Bley (b. 1986, Uppsala, Sweden, lives in Oslo, Norway), 

Sara-Vide Ericson (b. 1983, Bollnäs, Sweden, lives in Älvkarhed, Sweden),  

Carola Grahn (b. 1982, Jåhkåmåhkke, Lapland, Sweden, lives in Malmö, Sweden), 

Alma Heikkilä (b. 1984, Pälkäne, Finland, lives in Helsinki, Finland),  

Jane Jin Kaisen (b. 1980, Jeju Island, South Korea, lives in Copenhagen, Denmark),  

Juha Pekka Matias Laakkonen (b. 1982, Helsinki, lives in Helsinki, Finland),  

Linda Lamignan (b. 1988, Stavanger, Norway, lives in Copenhagen, Denmark), 

Timimie Märak (b. 1988, Stockholm, lives in Stockholm, Sweden),  

Olof Marsja (b. 1986, Gällivare, Lapland, Sweden, lives in Gothenburg, Sweden), 

Santiago Mostyn (b. 1981, San Francisco, lives in Stockholm, Sweden),  

Lea Porsager (b. 1981, Frederikssund, Denmark, lives in Copenhagen, Denmark), 

Amitai Romm (b. 1985, Jerusalem, lives in Copenhagen, Denmark),  

Vidha Saumya (b. 1984, Patna, India, lives in Helsinki, Finland),  

Inuuteq Storch (b. 1989, Sisimiut, lives in Sisimiut, Greenland),  

Jenna Sutela (b. 1983, Turku, Finland, lives in Berlin),  

Apichaya [Piya] Wanthiang (b. 1987, Bangkok, lives in Oslo, Norway),  

Simon Daniel Tegnander Wenzel (b. 1988, Hamburg, lives in Oslo, Norway)  

After the Sun—Forecasts from the North is the inaugural exhibition of the Buffalo AKG Nordic Art & Culture Initiative. It is co-organized by the Buffalo AKG Art Museum and Gammel Strand, Copenhagen, Denmark.

The Buffalo AKG Nordic Art & Culture Initiative is a unique platform in North America for art of the Nordic region in a broad sense, encompassing artists whose practices are tied to a landmass that includes Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and the Åland Islands. The Initiative is dedicated to organizing programs and exhibitions at the Buffalo AKG and in the Buffalo community with artists and cultural producers across disciplines who are substantively associated with the Nordic region. As part of the Initiative, over the next sixty years the Buffalo AKG will develop North America’s leading collection of contemporary art from the Nordic region.

BUFFALO AKG ART MUSEUM

1285 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, New York 14222

buffaloakg.org

Sculptor Kai Nielsen @ Glyptotek, Copenhagen + Faaborg Museum – "Born of Everyday Life" Exhibition

Kai Nielsen – Born of Everyday Life

Glyptotek, Copenhagen

30 May 2024 - 5 January 2025

Portrait of Kai Nielsen

Undated 

Glyptotek's archive © Ida & Gustav Krog

Kai Nielsen during the work on the decoration of Blågårds Plads

Undated 

© Holger Damgaard

Kai Nielsen 

The Water Mother. Designed 1918-20. Chopped 2003-04 

The Glyptoteket © Anders Sune Berg

The Glyptotek presents Kai Nielsen – Born of Everyday Life. The exhibition has been devised in close collaboration with Faaborg Museum, which presents a parallel exhibition with the same title at the same time*.

If you have visited the Glyptotek in Copenhagen, you have probably already met "The Water Mother", who welcomes visitors to the Glyptotek from her pool in the Winter Garden. Maybe you have also seen Kai Nielsen’s sculptures of working people on Blågårds Square in Copenhagen, but without knowing they were by him.

Many people in Denmark even own their own little Kai Nielsen statuette. Kai Nielsen called his statuettes “hand-sized”. Designed for Bing & Grøndahl, Kähler and Dansk Kunsthandel, they ended up in countless Danish homes. Under #migogkai, owners of Kai Nielsen statuettes can share a photo and their story about the statuette, thereby becoming part of the exhibition.

Kai Nielsen - Muscle men, mythology and motherhood

Kai Nielsen (1882 – 1924) was fascinated by the human body. His themes included both strong male bodies with the ideal physique of antiquity as a role model – for example, in the monumental sculpture First Generation – and female figures inspired by ancient mythology like Aphrodite – for example in the sculpture "Aarhus Girl" or "Venus with the Apple". But he was also dedicated to everyday motifs: for example, "Girl Fiddling with Her Toes", statuettes of children, and busts of his family and of famous athletes, artists and art collectors of his day.

The Glyptotek and Kai Nielsen

Kai Nielsen’s endeavour to depict ‘what is natural’ and make his works accessible invests his art with a down-to-earth, popular quality. At the same time, his sculptures feature references to mythological and ancient stories. One of his most iconic works, "The Water Mother" (1921) – the landmark of the Glyptotek – was originally carved at the museum. Her story features in the exhibition, which will also introduce visitors to some of Kai Nielsen’s most well-known works.

Kai Nielsen attended the academy in Copenhagen and found inspiration at the Glyptotek, where he studied 19th-century French and Danish sculpture, and ancient Greek and Roman art. At an early stage in his career, he got in touch with the brewer Carl Jacobsen: maybe to inspire the patron of art to invest in his works. The Glyptotek has an extensive collection of Kai Nielsen’s sculptures and sketches, which are presented in the exhibition alongside loans from museums and private collections in Denmark and Norway.

Kai Nielsen during work on a statuette

Undated 

The archive of the Glyptothek

Kai Nielsen during work with Zeus and Io, 1916 

© Peter Elfelt

Kai Nielsen

First generation, 1906

Plaster 

The Glyptoteket © Anders Sune Berg

Kai Nielsen

Morning Toilet, 1918 

Faaborg Museum  © Andreas Bastiansen

Kai Nielsen - Studying the body

Kai Nielsen was born and raised in Svendborg. There was something both down-to-earth and lofty about Kai Nielsen. This was reflected in the quasi-mythological story of Kai the sculptor and human being, to which his family, friends and acquaintances all contributed. He possessed a sparkling sense of humour, great charisma, superhuman willpower and manic industriousness, despite his rather frail constitution and poor health.

“It takes a healthy body to make healthy art,” was one of the mottos of the artist from Funen. This was a conviction he took literally. Persistently, he modelled the human body, while training his own. He rowed, swam, boxed, rode, fenced and wrestled, and hiked in the mountains of Norway, the home country of his wife, the painter Yanna Lange Kielland Holm (1880-1932). He fought an eternal battle between health and illness and, after several years of illness and operations, died in 1924 at the early age of 41.

* In Faaborg Museum, the exhibition runs from 9 June 2024 to 5 January 2025.

Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek

Dantes Plads 7 • 1556 Copenhagen

www.glyptoteket.com

Faaborg Museum

Gronnegade 75 • 5600 Faaborg

www.faaborgmuseum.dk