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14/6/2000

The Arken Collection

Arken Museum of Modern Art, Ishoj

For the third consecutive summer ARKEN exhibits selected works from its permanent collection in the Art Axis and the Graphics Gallery. As the most recently established museum of modern art in Denmark, ARKEN’s collection is concentrated on modern and contemporary art. The collection supplements and broadens the scope of other collections of art in Denmark, and the focus is especially on Danish and Nordic art in an international perspective.

Today, ARKEN’s collection comprises around 260 works of art - 50 of these have been chosen for this summer’s exhibition, which centres on the museum’s most recent acquisitions. These are shown in continuation of the works, which are already part of the collection.

The Art Axis

A new artist in Denmark is the Israeli artist Doron Solomons whose video My Collected Silences is shown at the top of the Art Axis. Solomons was formerly employed in a television company, and his video shows a collection of discarded cuts from television interviews brought by the company in their news programmes. There is no speech on the video. It only shows the moment when the speakers temporarily pause. Solomons’ work gives visual expression to the pause - the moment of reflection, doubt or compassion, and the search for the right words and the right continuation.

The photograph Flex Pissing/Björk er en nar [a.k.a. Bringing It All Back Home] 1, 1997, by Claus Carstensen and the artist group Superflex, is the size of a billboard and the most famous work in ARKEN’s collection. It received a lot of attention in an ironic and critical campaign by the Danish tabloid newspaper Ekstra Bladet, which attacked what they described as The Danish Art Mob in the winter of 1998-99. As a result, the work was included in a large exhibition at the Aarhus Museum of Art in the autumn of 1999, which showed works of art, which have caused a scandal in the 20th century. Here, it was on display along with a prominent selection of central works from Danish art history.

The persons in the photograph are not immediately recognisable because they hide their faces. But in fact the picture represents the artists themselves: Claus Carstensen (his back to the camera) and Superflex (wearing animal masks). The photograph is from the Californian desert and contains a number of references to music as idiom. Especially the reference to the Irish band U2 and their record "The Joshua Tree" is obvious due to the composition which imitates their album cover.

It is an unusual work because it is a co-creation by two parties who do not normally work together. Claus Carstensen was a professor, and Superflex were students at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, when the photograph was taken. Thus, two different generations and two different idioms are joined in the photograph.

Another example of how the Danish artist group Superflex works can be seen in the next work in the Art Axis: Superflex Biogas in Africa.

In 1997, Superflex developed a biogas plant, which was installed in a village in Tanzania. Since then, two orange balloons have transformed biological waste from humans and animals into gas, thus making an African household self-sufficient in terms of heating and lighting.

At ARKEN, this work presents itself as a kind of stand for the biogas plant displaying the prototype of the balloon, diagrams, posters and a table with brochures.

The three videos document the installation of the plant and show how Superflex, in a situation like this, interacts with the local population. The large orange balloon, which at first sight appears to be a glaring sculptural object, turns out to be a functional object as well. Superflex does not use art to point at specific issues, but as a way of actively intervening in social and political structures - as a place for real, practical solutions.

Superflex Biogas in Africa shows a simple, cheap, attractive and ecologically sound model for the production of energy in a third world country. And a work of art that encourages thought on the relations between rich and poor countries.

To the right of Superflex’s work, a number of monochromes by Ciaran Lennon, Ola Billgren and Claus Jensen are on display. The surface of their paintings consists of one single colour. These paintings all seek to explore formally the traditional categories of painting and sculpture. Claus Jensen, for instance, calls his piece Painting in three parts, but leaves it standing on the floor rather than hanging on a wall.

This year, ARKEN has acquired two large works by the young Danish sculptor Martin Erik Andersen. His sculpture Lamp knitwear (Apokalypsis Katapafsis) from 1999 hangs from the ceiling. It spreads a rare light because of its pink aquarium neon tubes. The subtitle Apokalypsis Katapafsis is spelt out in the machine knit squares each containing a letter.

Apokalypsis Katapafsis is Greek and denotes the place on the island Patmos where St. John the Divine had his revelation of the Apocalypse - the world coming to an end. According to the revelation, the world will come to an end four times after which God will create a new Earth and a new sun. The sculpture refers not only to the destruction of everything, but also to regeneration and a new beginning. The title, however, is misleading in terms of the location of the sculpture because it refers to a specific place on a Greek island remote from ARKEN’s Art Axis.

The work exhibits a balance between form and idea, language and physical material as well as body and spirit. The connection to the body is established through the knitted material. The spectator’s thoughts are naturally directed at clothing, and then - because of the transparency and the pale, pink colours - at the skin itself. The ragged, almost dissolving, knitwear reinforces the reference in the title to Judgment Day and total breakdown.

The other sculpture by Martin Erik Andersen Shuttering with wallpieces was originally made for ARKEN’s exhibition "Out of Shape" in 1997. Shut-tering with wallpieces is designed especially for ARKEN’s Art Axis. It emphasises the connection between sculpture and architecture. The shuttering materials of the box suggest concrete casting and therefore relate directly to the walls of the Art Axis, which have been cast on site. The sculpture establishes a gradual transition from the box as a detached spatial shape to the relief of the wall shuttering. This is a way of effecting the transition between space and its limit - the wall.

The sculpture also plays with the opposition between public space - in this case the museum - and private space belonging to the individual, the artist. The box represents both spaces. In fact, it has a very private dimension: It is a 1:1 model of the artist’s bedroom. Martin Erik Andersen wants to demonstrate that the sculptures spring from - and are inextricably tied to - the private reality of the artist.


Richard Deacon’s sculpture Piltdown offers a double experience. It is both an interesting shape created from various, very sensuous materials and an object, which, because of its size and colour resembles a skull. The title Piltdown also refers to a skull and adds a unique dimension to the sculpture. "Piltdown" refers to a famous archaeological discovery of a prehistoric human skull.

The discovery became one of the most talked-about scientific scandals. In 1912, English scientists believed the skull to be The Missing Link, which establishes the evolutionary connection between monkey-like creatures and humans. Not until 40 years later, the "Piltdown-man" was revealed to be a falsification. The combination of a human skull with the jaw and teeth of an orangutang had deceived the archaeologists. This complexity also characterises the sculpture. It is constructed of different elements and materials, including curtain rings. The subtlety of the title draws attention to the fact that Deacon’s sculpture - like the "Piltdown-man" - is a human construction, which resembles, but is not, what it pretends to be.


On the right wall, three recently purchased paintings by the German artist Günther Förg are displayed. They are variations on the same pictorial theme or motif: Different figures and pictorial treatment of the surface have been placed on a yellow monochrome background. Around a central stem-like yellow figure the canvas is filled with loose brushstrokes, painted spaces and a grid structure consisting of vertical and horizontal brushstrokes.

The grid motif can be found in Edvard Munch’s late paintings where the figures in the painting as well as the background often are realised by vertical and horizontal brushstrokes. The three paintings from 1999 are among the earliest Munch-inspired paintings done by Förg, and it is obvious that concrete-abstract painting clashes with a more lyrical, expressive form of expression. The paintings show how Förg has adapted the specific Nordic tradition and assimilated it into his own artistic expression.


Two of the artists who are currently attracting attention because of a distinct and strongly personal style in painting are Tal R and Kasper Bonnén. The new paintings emerge as apparently spontaneous and unsophisticated expressions, often deliberately sloppy, but possessing an innocent sincerity which seems to be moving away from the intellectual paintings of the 1980’s.

Furthermore, Tal R paints recognisable objects and everyday situations. The spectator does not need any prior knowledge in order to understand his works. They use a simple, humorous, almost cartoon-like figurative language and have great pictorial and colouristic power.

In Blocked door (2000) the surface has been diagonally divided into a white and a blue area. On top of this abstract structure is a figurative layer where you see an arm opening or closing a door.

Behind the door is a chaotic mess: chairs, lamps, potted plants, mugs, speakers. To close off, or to create openings, is a recurring motif in Tal R’s art. Blocked door is about not being able to get in. It shows a situation where everyday objects have piled up and block the occupation of a space. During the latest decades photography has acquired an increasingly prominent position in contemporary art. Therefore, it now has a distinct and natural place in ARKEN’s collection.


The Romantic landscape tradition is continued in Mads Gamdrup’s photographs of the night at Moens Klint where the path of the stars and the rotation of the Earth have been mapped as luminous lines across a dark sky. And in Per Bak Jensen’s photographs of burning haystacks and wood paths where suspended sacks protect young pheasants against birds of prey. The photographs strangely portray the special magic of the place. Gamdrup and Bak Jensen are exponents of "straight photography", i.e. photography without arrangement and manipulation.

Claus Carstensen’s 10 colour photographs Crossland, Exile (1992) similarly portray places and situations from the artist’s travels.

Claus Carstensen, Peter Holst Henckel and Søren Martinsen, whose photographs are also part of ARKEN’s collection, do not employ photography alone, but use it in combination with a range of different mediums in their artistic practice.

A different type of photography can be seen in Lene Stæhr’s photographs of voluminous, weightless human bodies turned upside down, questioning our common notions of proportion and gravitation.

If you continue up through the Red Axis, you see ARKEN’s permanent display of photographs from the collection.

On the wall leading to the Graphics Gallery hangs Torben Ebbesen’s wall object Caprice from 1999. This work teases our usual notion that if something hangs on a wall, it must be a painting. Ebbesen’s work is a hybrid of painting and sculpture where the picture is sliding out from under the glass.


With the sculpture Cellarabesque Elisabeth Toubro has created a transparent, hanging sculpture - a system of iron bars covered by bulging glass fibre plates. It resembles cell nucleuses or unpredictable biological structures invisible to the naked eye. The sculpture is presented in connection with Hairarabesque 1 and 2, which contain references to Toubro’s childhood in Greenland. The skin of a polar bear as well as the Eskimo hairstyle inspires her shapes. From these sculptures emerge letter-like designs of wood.

They can be seen as images of the ritual sounds made by the shamans of Greenland (and registered by the Danish Arctic explorer Knud Rasmussen).

With their references to skin and hair the works be-come part of the tradition of using skin and hair in trophies - as emblems of victory. In this instance, we may assume that Toubro is demonstrating the victory over and the suppression of the original culture of Greenland by Western culture. The photographs on the wall are also by Elisabeth Toubro. They show different rooms constructed and later photographed by the artist. The rooms are like miniature theatre stages, built for the occasion and hereafter non-existent.

They are further examples of how photographs have become an integrated part of the practice of contemporary art, though - like Elisabeth Toubro - they primarily work with different forms of expression.


The Graphics Gallery

The Beds is an installation by the French artist Christian Boltanski. The work is designed as a group of hospital beds or incubators. Next to some of the beds there is a stand, the kind which hospitals use to attach little bags with blood and other fluids. The artist, however, has attached a fluorescent light. Boltanski says of his own work that it gives associations to hospitals, suffering and the chaos before death.

The work activates the emotions we experience in connection with illness and death - both the emotions rooted in our individual experiences and a more general and common fear of life threatening situations. As such, the work is in line with the recurring motif in Boltanski’s art: Man and the human condition.

Boltanski works with common everyday materials in order to make art present for the spectator. A work like The Beds relates closely to real life in an attempt to speak directly to our emotions. By using the installation as an artistic expression Boltanski creates a suggestive scenography in the exhibition area.

The Beds was originally shown in ARKEN’s exhibition of Christian Boltanski’s work in 1998/99 and it was subsequently purchased.

Visit The ARKEN Collection at http://www.kid.dk - The National Database on Art in Danish Museums.

Opening hours:
Tuesday-Sunday 10.00-17.00
Wednesday 10.00-21.00
Monday Closed

Arken Museum of Modern Art
Skovvej 100 - Denmark-2635 Ishoj
tel +45 43540222
fax +45 43540522

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