Collection

The HEART collection takes its point of departure in the Danish and international conceptual and experimental art from the 1960's up until today. The exhibition provides insights into the period's central developments in the form of three selected themes; "Materiality and immateriality", "Expanding the Concept of Art" and "New Conceptual and Figuative Painting". 

Materiality and immateriality

Around the year 1960 a renewed interest in the materials emplyed in art blossoms forth. In a response against abstract expressionism and the favouring of spontanerity, artists move on to investigate new potential materials. In Denmark painters such as Paul Gadegaard conduct experiments that follow in the wake of concrete abstraction and its non-figurative experiments with the opportunities offered by the new materials. Inspired by his encounter with Piero Manzoni in Herning, Gadegaard arrives at a new, tactile sense for the art of painting.

In Italy a number of avant-garde artists such as Lucio Fontana, Enrico Castellani, and Piero Manzoni conduct a rather more radical search for a point zero from where everything can spring anew. They experiment with new materials such as cotton and cotton wool, nails, and straw. The result is a new, never-before-seen sensibility and sense of spatial infinity that has a mediative, exploring quality. The objective is a transcendent modernism which searches for the sublime and the absolute through art.

Expanding the Concept of Art

The general break with established art conventions that took place in the 1960's had a crucial impact on the further development of art up to pur present day. A new notion of the artist's role gains ground; the concept of what art can be undergoes a total transformation.

An interest in the surroudnings and context of art begins to spread. This does not jut concern art in relation to the art insitution and the spectators; it also takes the form of a social, often political, interest in society as such. Artists begin using new materials and media - the body, landscape, and everyday objects - to create art. The transformational potential of art is investigated, giving rise to new genres such as land art, body art, action art, happenings, video art, and installation art.

The experiments build on a critical modernism which, as was suggested by Marcel Duchamp and others, intended to de-mystify art and the artist's role. Piero Manzoni creates his cans of "Artist's Shit" in 1961, and in 1979 Josepth Beuys declares that Everyone is an artist. The concept of art is expanded and a new notion of the artist's role sees the light of day.

New Conceptual and Figurative Painting

Even though the art of painting has been pronounced dead on numerous occasions from 1960 onwards, it remains very much alive. Now, in the new millenium, artists play with artictic styles like never before. The abstract is mixed with the figurative, conceptual painting meshes with the narrative. One common feature of the paintings presented here is that the narrative or morif is always subjected to painterly experimentation. This is a vein of painting based on the conceptual; it is about the act of painting nad about playing with conventions within the space provided by painting. 

Troels Wörsel's conceptual paitings can be regarded as philosophical conversations with art history. This is painting which is about making good pictures. John Kørner's figuratively narrative paintings, named after Danish soldiers fallen in Afghanistan, focus attention on a reality relevant to us all, but does so by means of poetic imagery. Thaddeus Strode's wild mix of images from our visual culture are projections of strange and different imaginay spaces which activate spectators by bringing our memories, fantasties, and personal imaginings into play. 

The paintings all carry forth the history of painting with pride and a pronounced self-awareness, embracing a world in change.    

Photo: Steen Gyldendal

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Thursday: 10-22

Monday: Closed

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(Closed Monday April 5th)

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