The Museum of Thinking
dal 17/1/2003 al 23/3/2003
Segnalato da
17/1/2003
The Museum of Thinking
Nikolaj Kunsthal - Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center, Copenhagen
Jytte Hoy. The brains of great men in jars. At the Institute of the Human Brain in Moscow the brains of Lenin, Stalin and Tchaikovsky have been preserved in jars. But why have the brains of great men been put into jars in an institute? As a detective Jytte Høy unravels the historical incidents behind the seemingly insignificant treasures which for this occasion have been built up as three tableaux in the Upper Gallery of the Art Center.
Jytte Høy
Upper Gallery
The brains of great men in jars
At the Institute of the Human Brain in Moscow the brains of Lenin,
Stalin and Tchaikovsky have been preserved in jars
But why have the brains of great men been put into jars in an institute?
Can we be sure that genius is located solely in the brain?
And why has not the entire body been preserved in glass?
These are the questions with which the artist and director of the
Jutland Academy of Fine Arts Jytte Høy will be challenging us at this
year's winter exhibition, The Museum of Thinking, at Nikolaj, Copenhagen
Contemporary Art Center.
As a detective Jytte Høy unravels the historical incidents behind the
seemingly insignificant treasures which for this occasion have been
built up as three tableaux in the Upper Gallery of the Art Center. Each
tableau consists of a number of new sculptures, objects, drawings and
photographs, revolving around a certain objet trouvé or incident.
The historical launch pad for Jytte Høy's contemporary art could be a
piece of blotting paper with red, random doodles on it, scribbled during
the very meeting at which the truce of Versailles of November 1918 was
finalised. Or it could be a propaganda poster of the Communist leader
Klement Gottwald, greeting the people from the balcony of one of
Prague's baroque palaces back in the winter of 1948.
The Museum of Thinking is a spacious and visual experiment which seeks
out apparently meaningless places to find out what they are hiding.
The exhibition unfolds as a journey through a topographic atlas, made up
by a sense of wonder and other defining characteristics of the ability
of the human mind to form associations, to compare and connect various
sense perceptions. It is about placing oneself in the middle of the
meaningless, at the very point at which sense and nonsense jar on each
other and launch the exhibition guest onto dangerous ground.
The Museum of Thinking opens on Friday January 17 from 4 to 6 p.m. and
is open to the general public from Saturday January 18.
To coincide with the exhibition, a catalogue will be published with
introductions to Jytte Høy's works as well as a short story by Danish
author Merete Pryds Helle as a literary counterpart to Høy's visual work
of art.
Nikolaj, Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center
Nikolaj Plads - Copenhagen