Henrik Olesen
Nikola Dietrich
Lars Bang Larsen
Ariane Muller
Judith Hopf
Nikola Dietrich
Jacob Fabricius
Hatje Cantz
The exhibition includes new works together with a selection from his past fifteen years of artistic production. Olesen uses collage, sculpture, and minimalist spatial interventions to engage with the body and questions of gender and its representation in order to interrogate structures of power relations and the construction of historiography and identities.
curated by Nikola Dietrich
The Museum für Gegenwartskunst Basel is pleased to announce an
extensive survey exhibition of the artist Henrik Olesen (b. Denmark
1967). The exhibition includes new works together with a selection
from his past fifteen years of artistic production.
Henrik Olesen uses collage, sculpture, and minimalist spatial
interventions to engage with the body and questions of gender and its
representation in order to interrogate structures of power relations
and the construction of historiography and identities. In a
perspective on the political consequences of what is regarded as
normality and everyday life, family structures, media, and divergent
balances of power within society form one thematic focus of the
exhibition.
The points of departure for Olesen's work include contemporary as
well as historic references and interventions into a variety of
fields—inscribing new narratives onto (art)historical documents. In
the group of works entitled How Do I Make Myself a Body? (2009),
Olesen tells the story of the English mathematician and visionary
inventor of the computer, Alan Turing, whom the British authorities
sentenced to undergo treatment with female hormones. In the
installation Mr. Knife and Mrs. Fork (2009), he presents a depiction
and critical analysis of the heterosexual nuclear family, its
potentially dysfunctional representatives and reproductive needs. In a
series of installations entitled Anthologie de l'amour sublime
(2003), Olesen inserts pictures of gay sex scenarios, into Max Ernst's
surreal pictorial narratives La femme 100 têtes (1929) and Une
Semaine de bonté (1934), suggesting the possibility that a concealed
homosexuality inhabits Ernst's surrealist world. The lack of
information around homosexuality related legislation and its distorted
appropriation and in media and history are an essential part of
Olesen's approach and is rooted in the tensions between the often
contrasting and conflicting hegemonic and subcultural narratives.
The exhibition was developed in conjunction with Konsthall Malmö. A
monographic catalogue with text contributions by Lars Bang Larsen,
Ariane Müller, Judith Hopf and an introduction by Nikola Dietrich and
Jacob Fabricius was published with Hatje Cantz.
The exhibition and catalogue were made possible through the generous
support of the "Fonds für künstlerische Aktivitäten im Museum für
Gegenwartskunst der Emanuel Hoffmann-Stiftung und der Christoph Merian
Stiftung".
Press Office: Christian Selz, Tel. 0041 (0) 61 2066206 pressoffice@kunstmuseumbasel.ch
Kunstmuseum Basel, Museum für Gegenwartskunst
St. Alban-Rheinweg 60, CH-4010 Basel
Opening Hours Tue - Sun 11 a.m. - 6 p.m.
closed on Monday