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

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

Flowers in Art @ ARKEN Museum of Modern Art, Ishoj

FLOWERS IN ART 

ARKEN Museum of Modern Art, Ishøj

Through 9 January 2022

A major exhibition at ARKEN tells the story of humankind’s fascination with the world of flowers. It examines how flowers in art reflect changing worldviews, outlooks on nature and social conditions – from the sensuous flower paintings of the nineteenth century to the eco-critical currents of contemporary art.

Marc Quinn 

Bhasat Wilap at Assi Ghat, 2010 

ARKEN Museum of Modern Art 

Photo: Anders Sune Berg

Andy Warhol  

Flowers, 1970 

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk 

Photo: Poul Buchard / Brøndum & Co.

J.L. Jensen  

Still Life with Flowers in an Antique Vase on a Marble Tabletop, 1834 Thorvaldsens Museum 

Photo: Thorvaldsens Museum

Flowers: we decorate our homes with them, use them as messengers to convey our innermost feelings and find healing in their scents and vitality. Flowers have always fascinated us and found their way into art. The exhibition Flowers in Art at ARKEN examines the many and varied relationships between flower and humankind expressed in art, as represented here by works by fifty-two international and Danish artists.

Says curator Dea Antonsen: ‘Flowers have been a central motif throughout art history, but in these climate-critical times the flower motif takes on new and poignant relevance as we have to rethink our relationship with nature. The exhibition brings together iconic, historical works and cutting-edge contemporary art, prompting new perspectives to emerge on how we humans “consume” flowers, stage ourselves by means of flowers and shape the world through our relationships with flowers’.

Tony Matelli

Arrangement, 2013

Courtesy the artist and Andréhn-Schiptjenko, Stockholm, Paris

Petrit Halilaj & Alvaro Urbano

7th of April 2020 (Quince), 2020

Courtesy the artists, ChertLüdde, kamel mennour and Travesia Cuatro

Kapwani Kiwanga  

The Marias, 2020 

Courtesy Centre d’art contemporaine d’Ivry – le Crédac, 

the artist and Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin. 

Photo: Marc Domage

As a motif in art, the flower has had several heydays. One of these was the nineteenth century’s soulful depictions of the beauty and vitality of flowers, which were part of an overall quest to understand the essence of nature and how the world worked. Flower motifs appear in new ways in art today, a time when scientists issue dire warnings about biodiversity crises and young people take to the streets for the sake of the climate. The romantic notion of unspoiled nature has been lost, and contemporary artists rethink the relationship between flower and humankind in works full of finely attuned sensibilities, humour and critique.

Alhed Larsen

Rhododendron, n.d. 

The Johannes Larsen Museum 

Photo: Jens Frederiksen

Hilma af Klint

On the Viewing of Flowers and Trees, 1922

The Hilma af Klint Foundation

Photo: Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden

Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg

The Clearing (Yellow, Purple and Rosehip Flower), 2015 (detail)

Courtesy the artists and Lisson Gallery

Photo: Jack Hems

The exhibition is in itself a diverse bouquet of sensory experiences, presenting many and varied works that depict flowers in such diverse media as painting, sculpture, photography, film and installation art. Bringing together illustrious artists of the past such as Odilon Redon, Claude Monet, J.L. Jensen and Hilma af Klint with modern and contemporary artists that include Marc Quinn, Andy Warhol, Melanie Bonajo, Tony Matelli and Petrit Halilaj & Alvaro Urbano, Kapwani Kiwanga, Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg, the exhibition forges new connections between the historical roots of the flower motif and the critical agendas of contemporary art.

The exhibition is accompanied by a lavishly illustrated catalogue in Danish and English with contributions from, among others, Danish curator Dea Antonsen, American historian of science Lorraine Daston, Polish philosopher Monika Bakke, Danish art historian Rasmus Kjærboe and Austrian literary scholar Isabel Kranz.

ARKEN MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

Skovvej 100, 2635 Ishøj

www.arken.dk

Gold and Magic @ ARKEN Museum of Modern Art

Gold and Magic 

ARKEN Museum of Modern Art,  Ishøj 

Through 8 August 2021 

SYLVIE FLEURY 

Serie ELA 75K (Won't Smudge Off), 2000

© Sylvie Fleury. Photo David Stjernholm

THOMAS J. PRICE 

Untitled (Icon 1), 2017

Courtesy the artist

ARKEN Museum of Modern Art presents the special exhibition Gold and Magic in which golden treasures from The National Museum of Denmark enter into dialogue with works by some of the greatest contemporary artists. The exhibition takes visitors on a journey through many millennia to explore the power of gold and magic.

Gold has fascinated humankind since ancient times. We express ourselves through gold, and the way of using gold mirrors who we are: from the sacrificial offerings of antiquity and the golden altars of the Middle Ages to contemporary art, which uses gold as a vehicle for pointing out the connection between value and identity. In this spring’s major special exhibition, a range of historical artefacts and precious national treasures from the National Museum of Denmark is exhibited at ARKEN, creating an exciting encounter between cultural history and art. A meeting that offers new perspectives on our thousand-year history with gold.

Golden traces in contemporary art

All over the world, artists are currently turning to gold as a means of expression. They use it to tell stories about humanity and our society – and to question issues such as nationalism and conspicuous consumption. In Gold and Magic, international artists like Damien Hirst, Sylvie Fleury, Lorna Simpson, Thomas J. Price, Bill Viola and Ugo Rondinone show how wealth, identity and the exercise of power are closely interwoven, using gold to highlight our eternal pursuit of happiness and beauty. Some artists are particularly preoccupied with the magic and religious aspects of gold, while others use the precious material to address the global colonial history so inextricably linked with gold. By entering into a dialogue with contemporary art at ARKEN, these historical objects take on new significance and a new identity.

UGO RONDINONE

the sun at 12 am, 2019 

Studio Rondinone 

Photo  Courtesy Studio Rondinone and kamel mennour, Paris - London

LORNA SIMPSON 

Momentum, 2011 

© Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

AI WEIWEI

Circle of Animals - Zodiac Heads (detail), 2010 

ARKEN Museum of Modern Art

Long term loan from the Frahm Collection 

Photo Torben Petersen

Across continents

Gold and Magic takes visitors on a tour around the world. There are golden objects from Colombia, Thailand and Japan, from Danish kings and ordinary Danes. The National Museum of Denmark’s collection demonstrates how gold has travelled with people across continents ever since antiquity – as well as how riches often accumulate in very few hands and in national treasuries. Gold and Magic is the result of an innovative collaboration with the National Museum of Denmark.

The special exhibition presents works by El Anatsui, James Lee Byars, Chris Burden, Eva Steen Christensen, Zhang Ding, Sylvie Fleury, Subodh Gupta, Louis Henderson, Damien Hirst, Alicja Kwade, Runo Lagomarsino, Mercedes Lara, Klara Lilja, Grayson Perry, Thomas J. Price, Ugo Rondinone, Lorna Simpson, Alexander Tovborg, Bill Viola and Ai Weiwei.

ARKEN MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

Skovvej 100, 2635 Ishøj

www.arken.dk

Katharina Grosse Exhibition at Arken Museum, Denmark

Utopia: Katharina Grosse  
Hello Little Butterfly, I Love You What’s Your Name
ARKEN - Museum of Modern Art, Ishøj
Through 7 November 2010

 

KATHARINA GROSSE, Hello Little Butterfly I Love You What's Your Name 
Installation photo - Courtesy of ARKEN Museum, Ishøj

Copenhagen. 200 m3 of earth, several hundred litres of spray paint and two giant ellipses have changed ARKEN Museum of Modern Art’s 150 m long Art Axis beyond recognition. In KATHARINA GROSSE’ UTOPIA exhibition Hello Little Butterfly, I Love You What’s Your Name the mounds of earth hug the walls, several metres high, the ellipses stand like huge gates wedged between floor and ceiling, and the paint lies like colourful clouds everywhere. Going into the large gallery is like walking into a painting. This is the first time that the room is changed so significantly.

Since the late 1990s, the spray gun has been Katharina Grosse’s preferred tool. With that in her hand, she explodes painting’s boundaries. Vibrant clouds of paint float into the room – onto walls and floors, over sculptures, everyday objects and enormous mounds of earth. Grosse insists on art’s ability to transcend boundaries and expand our experience of the surroundings. Her installation at ARKEN builds a new universe in the room. A giant mural moves from the wall, onto the floor and over a huge mound of earth and the jagged, rocklike sculptures scattered around the room. In the middle of the paint, “missing paintings” open up like empty holes. The vibrant colours create atmospheric effects and illusions of new rooms which open in the room.

KATHARINA GROSSE, Hello Little Butterfly I Love You What's Your Name Installation photo - Courtesy of ARKEN Museum, Ishøj

The play with transformation is anticipated in the title she has chosen for her installation at ARKEN: Hello Little Butterfly, I Love You What’s Your Name – a poetic phrase that juxtaposes the raw concrete of the monumental room, and that points to the kernel of the utopian endeavour – the possibility of change. The Grosse exhibition is the second of ARKEN’s three-year UTOPIA exhibition series. Her work concerns the utopia as a non-place. A better, as yet non-existent place which only exists in our imagination. In Grosse’s installation we literally step into art’s imaginary universe. Her painting is a place where we may explore and dream on. Art and the aesthetic experience become a concrete model for the utopia’s non-place.

KATHARINA GROSSE, Hello Little Butterfly I Love You What's Your Name
Installation photo - Courtesy of ARKEN Museum, Ishøj

Hello Little Butterfly, I Love You What’s Your Name is a constructive contrast. With her large installation, Katharina Grosse claims the established order does not have to be the way it is. Art can function as a basis for seeing everything differently. She wishes, in her own words, to “confront the viewer with other mental processes than the ones one is conditioned to in one’s everyday life.”

Katharina Grosse has created her installation especially for ARKEN’s Art Axis. Armed with spray guns she is executing a large, site-specific painting which binds together the installation’s many elements, anchoring paintings and sculptures in the concrete, physical room. Grosse never produces the same installation twice. Despite their striking, physical presence, her works are fleeting: Each installation is bound to the concrete room it is developed in, and when the exhibition at ARKEN is over, the installation will disappear.

KATHARINA GROSSE, The Other George (2009) for Amagertorv in Copenhagen
Installation photo - Courtesy of ARKEN Museum, Ishøj

In connection with the UTOPIA project, Katharina Grosse has also developed the sculpture The Other George (2009) for Amagertorv in Copenhagen. 

UTOPIA is supported by the Nordea-foundation.

ARKEN - Museum of Modern Art Skovvej 100, 2635 Ishøj, Denmark
www.arken.dk

UTOPIA: KATHARINA GROSSE
Hello Little Butterfly, I Love You What’s Your Name
12 December 2009 - 7 November 2010