Giant artworks from BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group’s architecture set to wow visitors at Kunsthal Charlottenborg
Kunsthal Charlottenborg kicks off the fall season with their most comprehensive exhibition of large-scale contemporary art to date: 'Big Art'. Art works by some of the most acclaimed artists in the world, including Ai Weiwei, Douglas Coupland, Jeppe Hein, Julie Edel Hardenberg, SUPERFLEX and Victor Ash, are exhibited at 1:1 scale – the original size of the art envisioned for BIG’s buildings and urban projects globally. The exhibition is presented from 21 September 2018 - 13 January 2019 and is curated by Michael Thouber in collaboration with BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group.
Big Art explores the field where art and architecture intersect, placing particular emphasis on the special challenges and demands artists face when working on a vast scale in architectural and urban spaces.
The exhibition title, Big Art, has a dual meaning: every artist featured has been chosen on the basis of their collaboration with BIG and at the same time the exhibition presents art on a large scale, showing each individual piece at the original size envisioned for its intended urban setting.
Art as creative dialogue
The exhibition transforms the 1,000 m2 south wing of Kunsthal Charlottenborg into an architectural landscape that welcomes visitors to explore BIG’s creative collaborations with a total of eighteen contemporary artists: Ai Weiwei, A Kassen, Andrew Zuckerman, Benoit Maire, Douglas Coupland, Es Devlin, HuskMitNavn, Jeppe Hein, John Kørner, Julie Edel Hardenberg, Martin de Thurah, Lars von Trier, Peter Funch, Shepard Fairey, Snarkitecture, SUPERFLEX, Tomas Saraceno, Victor Ash.
Michael Thouber, Director of Kunsthal Charlottenborg, about the exhibition:
‘At Kunsthal Charlottenborg we work extensively with projects that are intended to reach beyond our own particular site, but I also find it interesting to choose projects that end up outside the scope of museums, reclaiming and returning them to the investigative gaze of the institution in order to examine their effect – and what makes them tick. Kunsthal Charlottenborg’s decision to collaborate with Bjarke Ingels and BIG on this exhibition is particularly exciting because they don’t just use art as decoration. Rather, they enter into creative dialogues with the artists, inviting them at an early stage of the process and making them co-creators. What is interesting is how BIG and the artists are able to surprise us, shake up our expectations and make us question things by positing an aesthetic experience or message in the places where people pass by every day. This way, they affect their audiences through small movements in everyday life.’
One of the highlights in Big Art is the original house from Lars Von Trier’s serial killer thriller ‘The House That Jack Built’ which premiered at Cannes Film Festival in May. Designed by BIG, the house is shaped by the building material and not for the fainthearted! Also, visitors can look forward to exploring works such as Superkilen from the Nørrebro neighbourhood in Copenhagen; Social Bench, which was featured in the Danish EXPO pavilion in Shanghai; and Northern Lights, which is integrated into the façade of the skyscraper Telus Sky Tower in Calgary (Canada), due for completion in 2019.
About the collaboration with the artists in the development of BIG’s architecture, Bjarke Ingels says:
‘Our creative collaborations with artists from all over the world have been some of the most meaningful moments in our architectural adventures, and we are very pleased to see them celebrated in this exhibition, where everyone can experience the artists’ installations at the scale they were intended to be in.’