International art exhibition takes over significant places in Copenhagen

This summer, Kunsthal Charlottenborg presents an exhibition that moves out of the galleries and on to selected locations in the city of Copenhagen. Intensity and intimacy are in focus, and audience can look forward to great art experiences when a number of internationally leading video and performance artists create works for the city's scenic spaces and halls.

The contemporary world is, some say, marked by a predominant feeling of stress or anxiety. At state of being that is simultaneously angst filled and driven by desire, controlled by a protocol for how to live and perform in our contemporaneity. The result is tension, a dramatic hold between two states – pressure and drive. The exhibition Copenhagen. Red Light Green Light (In the Realm of the Senses) takes off from a mixed state of tension, tenderness and lifeforce.

The exhibition is shown at Kunsthal Charlottenborg and moves on to locations in the city of Copenhagen. Six international contemporary artists Korean Geumhyung Jeong, Argentinian Cecilia Bengolea, Brittish Cally Spooner, Swedish Ylva Snöfrid, Thai Korakrit Arunanondchai and Polish Alex Baczyński-Jenkins have been invited by curator Charlotte Sprogøe to present installations, video and performances at six different locations in Copenhagen – portraying the mental state of the world we live in. The exhibition is formed as a living entity, taking shape at various locations throughout Copenhagen, opening at different hours of the day, and different days of the months. Continuously occurring in new variations.

The artists in the exhibition evoke each their own form of a contemporary Ballet Méchanic (Ferdinand Leger, 1924). Each part of the exhibition presents a choreographed approach to art – a ritual, a dance, or a song, formed by the interplay between life force and death, or the machinic, thingness. The body language of post-capitalism, the state of affect marking contemporary life – and the interactions in our lives, formed by the gig economy, the service industry in post-industrial society, is the living backdrop for the exhibition. A living backdrop whose post-industrial invisible protocols for life, community making, body movement and for love, evoke the aesthetic form of the artwork, their energy and sensibility. The materiality of our times is met by the mythology that keeps us going – that animate something on the other side, behind the mirror, in the realm of the ghosts.

Locations for the exhibition are Kunsthal Charlottenborg, the equestrian room in the former stables at The Lapidarium of Kings, the Garden Salon at Copenhagen Music House, the Festival Hall at Charlottenborg Palace, an office building at the center of the city at Buen, Vester Farigmagsgade, the closed cathedral-like historical library at the University of Copenhagen.

View full exhibition program here.

Copenhagen. Red Light Green Light (In the Realm of the Senses) is curated by Charlotte Sprogøe and associated with two research projects focusing on art’s use of contemporaneity, sensibility and site.

The exhibition is realised in collaboration with University of Copenhagen, The Agency for Culture and Palaces – National Museum of Denmark, The Lapidarium of Kings, Ejendommen Buen.

Supported by the Augustinus Foundation, ECCA Family Foundation, Obel Family Foundation, Konsul George Jorck og Hustru Emma Jorck’s Foundation, The Ministry of Culture KUV, Knud Højgaard’s Foundation, The University of Copenhagen, Lemvigh-Müller Foundation, Novo Nordisk Foundation, Overretssagfører L. Zeuthens Mindelegat, Spar Nord Foundation, Danish Arts Council, William Demant Foundation.