ARKADISK FREDERIKSBERG

Up until the 23rd of February the exhibition Arkadisk Frederiksberg is open at Møstings Hus. To understand the roots of this project, organised between the artists Yvette Brackman, Hannah Heilmann and architect Robert Gassner, one can see it as a timely introduction to Frederiksberg – especially Møsting’s house itself, including the park surrounding it, which is one of the greenest urban areas in Denmark.

Frederiksberg is a municipal enclave surrounded by the municipality of Copenhagen. It is historically understood as a rich kommune characterized by its green areas, homes, aging pensionists, and urban professionals that live within its boundaries. Møstings Hus was the summer residence for the first Minister of Finance in Denmark, Johan Sigismund Møsting (1759–1843) and an advisor to the King. Today, this home is no longer in its original location (built in 1801 on Smallegade No. 2), due to its eventual demolition in 1965. In 1977 the city got behind a reconstruction project to replicate the original house and in the process preserved many of the original ornamental parts of the first. The new structure, now located across the street, is wedged (into Andebakkesti 5) at the north entrance of Frederiksberg Have. Today it mainly serves as a platform for Danish contemporary art and as office space to the various cultural organisations of Frederiksberg.

It is important to introduce all of the above, because upon first contact with the exhibit, the work of Hannah Heilmann playfully confuses the act welcoming you into a home. When we open a door, we find ourselves facing a second door as if trapped between two time-spaces. This is only an introduction to what awaits the visitor. Here, the artists recreate links between the reconstruction of temporalities and the evolution of geographic spaces (nodding to the house and its area). From a social geography perspective, we also seek to grasp the consequences of the transformations.

For this occasion, we can count on the contribution of artists (who are considered ‘guests’ of the exhibition) Hugo Hopping, Gamborg / Magnussen, and Søren Aagaard, who broaden the perspective of the exhibition in different ways. The viewer is in the presence of a wide range of expressions from painting to repurposed ready-mades to photography to installations.

Hannah Heilmann, Uden titel (Untitled), 2020. Photo by David Stjernholm.

Everyone is invited to think of a dialogue between works from the past and specific contemporary creations which retrace a story in the present that could shed light on our outlook on the future. Indeed, Frederiksberg was seen as an Arcadian place in its most popular form.

It was a reminder of innocent life, in a pastoral paradise. Today, we are witnessing a certain nostalgia for the pure values of a natural life of which the 6 artists are only the depositaries of this History.

Hannah Heilmann, Høstsalme (Harvest hymn), 2019 & Robert Gassner, Forskydning 1 - den sidste pavillon (Displacement 1 - the last pavilion), 2020. Photo by David Stjernholm.

Hannah Heilmann, Høstsalme (Harvest hymn), 2019. Photo by David Stjernholm.

In common, with the life-cycles of Møstings Hus and Frederiksberg, the artists reflect on historical and contemporary societal and popular cultural phenomena in a relevant discussion. With increased interest during the last few years, the question of a new bourgeois ethic is again present, one which corresponds perfectly to its class interest and its ideological reason. In other words, one playing the card of progressivism while at the same time being fiercely conservative. How to move beyond this question?

This artistic meeting is a unique opportunity to start asking new questions and to dive into the heart of a rich cultural heritage linking temporalities. Playing with the interior-exterior concept, the artists offer puzzling spatial interventions. Gamborg / Magnussen's “Cabbage Patch” is a specific work. Cabbage heads are placed in the middle of a room - in reference to the garden products that nourished the owners of the House.

It is a living work and a social gathering point around food. They create a sensory experience and a change from where the cabbage grows, is harvested, studied, cooked and served. The project creates a space for individual and collective recognition, but also a space for discussions on everyday objects, the landscape or the challenges of nutrition and climate.

Gamborg / Magnussen, Sen Kål (Late Cabbage), Møstings Hus, 2020. On the wall: C-print on canvas of a lost painting by Adolph Larsen from 1889, depicting cabbage fields at Frederiksberg. Photo by David Stjernholm.

Each work in the exhibit explores the tension produced by the introduction of new narratives within pre-established thought systems. In an aesthetic simplicity, the artist Hannah Heilmann favors a collaborative approach, between ready-mades and new photography, with a romantic feeling and marked by an absolute sweetness, discussed with vintage dresses by the British stylist Laura Ashley. The artist Hugo Hopping mixes a visual conversation with a Nordic atmosphere in his work The rest is silence.

Twenty stretched photographs – taken at Frederiksberg Have (gardens) and monochrome cobalt blue paintings ‘reserved’ for portraits of small-time Danish bank robbers – are arranged on semi-stacked tables. Their stillness witnesses the passage of time and this perpetual change in the relationship between men and their property. This work is part of an ongoing process and will develop further (up until its completion) during the exhibition period.

Hugo Hopping, The rest is silence, 2020. An ongoing and changing site-based installation at Møstingshus. Photo by David Stjernholm.

This last work could echo the proposal by Yvette Brackman, who built a multicolored sauna accompanied by a soundtrack speaking about the healing of the body as a metaphor for an economic period (1813) that led the country to bankruptcy and also draws parallels to the Great Recession that started in 2008 and that led many countries into economic crisis. Through this work, she denounces an unlimited relationship with money and which it is necessary to eliminate the accumulated toxins somatically captured by debt, desire, and stress. This healing sauna is a conceptual project fabricated to release tensions from the body (or for the country) to review its policies towards a return to a financial, but above all, social stability.

All around, and together, these artworks highlight the succession of historical moments of expansion and withdrawal, the construction of exchanges between individuals or communities, and the creation of various means of communication to make these exchanges possible.

Far from being a retrospective, the outlying objects, documents, archival or rephotographed images of the various changes of Frederiksberg and Møstings Hus are there to reveal the past, the present and the future. Objects selected by the artists or through the works of the artists set aside to examine themes such as the relationship we have with space and memory.

Arkadisk Frederiksberg. Møstings Hus. Photo by David Stjernholm.

Public events of a social nature take place around the exhibition, which happen on weekends during the exhibition period in the presence of artists and other professionals. This in order to question our relations with rural and urban housing and/or its conservation. The next meeting will be held on the 1st of February at 14 with Hugo Hopping on the issue of “land conservation and cognitive justice” and Robert Gassner on the “social life of buildings”.

This essay and review is part of an initiative to foster Danish and English language critical writings from a range of new talents across the visual arts; and as a partnership between I DO ART and SixtyEight Art Institute. This essay was translated by Christopher Sand-Iversen from the French original.

PLANETARY RETHINKING THROUGH CLOSER GESTURES

HANNE LISE THOMSEN: PHOTOGRAPHY BEYOND FOUR WALLS

SEWING BEYOND FORMS AND BODIES

FROG CHORUS

THE DESIRE TO DIG DEEPER INTO HISTORY WHILE PROPOSING NEW FUTURES