CONFRONTATION
- an exhibition about art’s position and attitude towards reality.
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It is with great pleasure that Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art presents a comprehensive group exhibition curated by the two danish artists claus ejner and Zven Balslev. One of the focal points of the exhibition is Terry Zwigoff’s 1994 movie Crumb, a documentary about the legendary American cartoonist Robert Crumb.
One of the main points of the film is that Crumb’s perverted, sex-fixated universe emerged as a direct consequence of the general suppression of sex drive and the cultivation of a certain consumer mentality in the 50s and 60s - an attempt to create the perfect modern consumer/worker/human being.
>From a greater perspective, Crumb’s position is symptomatic of all the artists participating in the exhibition. The focus of all the participating artists is directed towards their own time and their comments are based on the artists’ own experiences.
The term ‘contemporary’ should be understood as historically determined. The exhibition highlights how different artists have dealt with contemporary society throughout the last 100 years. At the same time, it focuses on artists who may have been forgotten or overlooked, because the curators think art history has a tendency to be more concerned with the development of form rather than content.
A clear example of this is Harald Engman, whose painting Tidens Malere (Today’s Painters) (1938) sheds light on the absurd division between modernism and the position of avant-garde: while the whole world was on fire, the most illustrious artists painted triangles and squares, and had deep, long and solemn discussions about lines and colours.
Another good example is Anton Hansen’s caustic social-realistic drawings of the poor in Copenhagen in the 1920s and 30s.
The aim of the art historical perspective is to show that ‘the old days’ can tell us a great deal about ‘the new times’ and that there are general and universal issues that are as relevant today as they were 100 years ago.
Besides the aforementioned theme of the exhibition, the artists are selected for their ability to express themselves in a clear, readable language, working on a relatively low budget, that in some cases reflect the paltry living conditions of the artists in question.
Participating artist:
Ichiba Daisuke (Jap), Anne Van Der Linden (FR), claus ejner (DK), Mads Steen (DK), Ulla Hvejsel(DK), Zven Balslev(DK), Terry Zwigoff (US), Jonas Seeberg(DK), Jacob Nielsen(DK), Sonja Lillebæk Christensen (DK), Gudrun Hasle(DK), Harald Engman(DK)(1903-1968), Anton Hansen(DK) (1891-1960), Storm P.(DK) (1882-1949), Pastor Laier(DK)(1883-1969), Dea Trier Mørch (DK) (1941-2001), Claus Deleuran(DK) (1946-1996) and Albert Mertz (DK) (1920-1990).
For more information please contact Press Coordinator Kit Leunbach at kl@denfrie.dk or +45 23 32 68 70 |
