DARKER is the third and final exhibition in c4 projects; series of exhibitions titled Nordic Autumn.
(Photo: Anna Hillbom)
The exhibition series intent to emphasize the development of a network among Nordic artists and to exhibit high-quality Nordic art in Copenhagen.
The calendar has turned to November and we have entered the darkest time of the year.
It is a darkness which is a basic condition for us who live in the Nordic countries, but also a Nordic darkness which has been promoted and culturally interpreted in everything from gastronomy, architecture, TV dramas and of course also visual art.
The group exhibition DARKER exhibits works by 8 Nordic visual artists. The invited artists, works in different media and with very different methods, but what they hold in common is that their practice is toned by something that could be defined as a certain darkness.
Darkness as the gloomy and dystopian side of humanity´s behaviour and actions, towards each other as well as nature. Darkness as the place that lies beyond our consciousness or perception, where the occult, mysterious or spiritual dominate. Or a darkness like a reflective lens, through which our contemporaries and conditions of existence are examined and nuanced.
The exhibiting artists are: Juuso Noronkoski (FI), Anna Hillbom (SE), Ida-Johanna
Lundqvist (NO / SE), Nils Ekman (SE), Maja Gade (DK), Arngrímur Borgþórsson (IS),
Emilia Bergmark (DK / SE) and Marte Edvarda Tidslevold (NO / SE).
Juuso Noronkoski (FI)
Juuso Noronkoski works with mixed-media installations that combine photography, video, sculpture and text. His installations focus on the demarcation between images, objects and written language: how each means of expression, with different temporal and material qualities, contributes to the common space of conversation. In the DARKER exhibition, Noronkoski presents the work Device No.4. In a photographic negative, the world is shown fundamentally upside down. The sun is represented as its own shadow, as shining black
light. The sun, which burns away its own image, can be seen as an analogy to modern man, striving after more light and insight, inadvertently generating darkness around him.
Anna Hillbom (SE)
In her sculptures, Anna Hillbom intends to create a sensual relationship with monumentality. Stemming from a personal logic, where tactile and poetic thinking are united in elemental and playful forms, her works appear both fragile and full of meaning. Objects from a classical cultural canon and modern objects are combined, to soften and reinterpret hegemonic expressions. Archaic gestures, archaeological finds and everyday objects are processed into vaguely recognizable shapes. Brass, plaster, wood and ceramic are combined to bring out the inherent qualities of the material, qualities which, together with the arrangement, point to a more mysterious or spiritual purpose with the objects.
Ida-Johanna Lundqvist (NO / SE)
Ida-Johanna Lundqvist operates between several academic fields, including art, medicine and anthropology. With a background in palliative care, her art revolves around rituals, language, healthcare history and funeral traditions.
Her research is based on records of the human body, medical science, folklore and poetry. Her ideas are translated into sculptures, sound and installations, often with contrasting elements such as organic and
artificial materials, hard against soft, light against dark or dead against living.
Lundqvist exhibits the work Protection Spells I-III, which is one of three works in a series of wall-hung
sculptures from 2020. Gaze and silicone are molded together and tattooed with images
from folklore, legends and medical history.
Nils Ekman (SE)
Nils Ekman works primarily with sculpture and digital animation. His art revolves around the relationship between the actual and the potential, and about the intertwining of technology, body and nature. Ekman´s work for the DARKER exhibition consists of a series of illuminated prints depicting three hybrid specimens, hybrids that appear both alienated and familiar. By mixing different textures and shapes into eerie floral compositions, the specimens hover between beauty and abjection. The images pay homage to both the erotic flora of Hieronymus Bosch´s painting; The Garden of Earthly Delights, as well as the German photographer Karl Blossfeld´s taxonomic study of plants from the 1920s.
Maja Gade (DK)
Maja Gade´s practice is based on landscapes and the materials that shape landscapes. This has developed into several installations, both performed in landscapes and as sculptural studies. Man has always had a need to regulate the landscape, either by farm cultivation, constructing gardens, or drastically reshaping the terrain to fit our own agenda.
Mapping the landscape is a way to gain control over it, pulling a grid down on it and try to encapsulate reality in the squares of the network. Gade exhibits the work Network Constructions at the exhibition. The work is part of a series of sculptures that use the net as an aesthetic form. The work is made of collected bricks from Sydhavnstippen.
Sydhavnstippen is an area outside Copenhagen that consists of a landfill made of
construction waste from 1945-73.
Arngrímur Borgþórsson (IS)
Borgþórsson is interested in the ethical, moral and practical implications of the use of digital and social media and the questions it raises when we as a species explore and interact with them. In the exhibition DARKER he presents the work “It was not me”. The work consists of a bronze sculpture with a message to the future.
The sentence is written in the artist's own fleeting handwriting. Bronze is one of the longest lasting materials, a
man-made bronze casting keeps its shape for about 38,000 years. This bronze sculpture will therefore most likely outlast humanity itself. The sculpture shares the title with Shaggys hit song from 2000, and anyone familiar with the song and the lyrics, will know that despite his rather blatant gaslighting, it was in fact him.
Emilia Bergmark (DK / SE)
Based on stories and observations of everyday life, Bergmark develops poetic and humorous installations that combine sculpture, writing, interior design, film and print. A continuous part of her research explores non-human objects from an anthropocentric point of view, analyzing and critiquing the systems by which humanity imposes order and meaning on the world. For this exhibition, Bergmark is exhibiting a new video work entitled;
Lucky. With tragicomic undertones, Lucky portrays the stigma of loneliness. It is an emotional story with roots in the northern Swedish storytelling tradition, where the truth never stands in the way of a good story, and an unreliable narrator rather is the rule than the exception.
Marte Edvarda Tidslevold (NO / SE)
Marte Edvarda Tidslevold is interested in encounters between people and the unwritten rules that unfold in the social game. She works with performance and installations, where textiles and tactility often play a prominent role. At times, the audience itself is involved as participants or co-players in her works. The work she presents at the exhibition DARKER is titled; Hvis du snur på fisken kan du høre regnet, which roughly translates as” If you turn the fish, you hear the rain”. The work is part of an ongoing project that examines the state of longing, longing for a place that are very significant to the artist, a place in the mountains of northern Norway; -Gjømmervatn. The project consists of a series of small manifestations of memories and objects collected from this place, which is shared with the viewer.