Full of Days

This year, 140 years have gone by since Kunsthal Charlottenborg – or Charlottenborg Exhibition Building as its was called in 1883 – was completed. Ever since its inception, the venue has hosted exhibitions featuring many of the leading contemporary artists of the given times, accommodating many different types of shows and activities.

The first art school for women was housed in the exhibition building in the early 1900s. For many decades, artists’ associations such as Grønningen and Corner showed their work in the exhibition building parallel with exhibitions featuring artists as diverse as P.S. Krøyer, Auguste Rodin, Anne Marie Carl Nielsen and Joseph Beuys. Ever since the beginning, the juried Spring and Autumn exhibitions have been regular recurring features, establishing a rhythm on the Copenhagen art scene while presenting an array of new, unknown as well as established artists, architects and designers. National exhibitions from several European countries have also been staged here, and the darker aspects of history include a German propagandist book exhibition during Denmark’s occupation. Anthropological exhibitions such as the legendary and controversial History of Man also took place at Charlottenborg in the 1950s. The rebellion of the hippie era was marked by major manifestations such as Festival 200 in 1969, the Women’s Exhibition XX in 1975 and the ‘Rainbow exhibition’ Love or Chaos in 1977.

Charlottenborg now celebrates its long history with a large-scale exhibition featuring all-new and older works alike. Together, they will evoke and add nuance to the history of Kunsthal Charlottenborg, a venue without a collection or a historical archive. Embracing chaos, affinities and time glitches, the exhibition Full of Days forges intuitive connections between historical moments and less-remembered shows, stories and events. Through a cacophony of voices, contemporary and historical artists are framed into a reflection on the elusiveness of time and the multiplicity of its representations, offering a non-linear account of one the Kunsthal’s possible histories.

Featured artists, new works: Louise Alenius, Benedikte Bjerre, Valentina Desideri & Denise Ferreira da Silva, Jason Dodge, Emil Elg, Henrik Plenge Jakobsen, Sahar Jamili, Maryam Jafri, Isabel Lewis & Dirk Bell, Asta Lynge, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Finn Reinbothe, Åbäke.

Historical artists featured in the show: Marina Abramovich, Anna Ancher, Gunnar Aagaard Andersen, Pia Arke, Billedstofteater, Claus Carstensen, Ursula Reuter Christiansen, Poul Gernes, Wilhelm Hammershøi, Asger Jorn, On Kawara, Mike Kelley & Paul McCarthy, Per Kirkeby, Arthur Köpcke, Susanne Mertz, Olivia Holm Møller, Anne Marie Carl Nielsen, Palle Nielsen, Astrid Noack, Lene Adler Pedersen, Susanne Ussinge & Carsten Hoff, Franz Ehrard Walther, and many more.

The exhibition is curated by Julia Rodrigues and Francesca Astesani from South into North.

Supported by the Augustinus Foundation, the Danish Arts Foundation, the Obel Family Foundation.