Poetics of Encryption

This year’s major themed exhibition at Kunsthal Charlottenborg is featuring works by Danish and international artists, ranging across media and offering new perspectives on the relationship between art and artificial intelligence.

New technologies, such as artificial intelligence, are often difficult to understand and the subject of much speculation. The exhibition explores the fascinating possibilities and concerns surrounding AI and other emerging tools. The featured artworks address the human image today—its limits and potential in an age of machine learning.

In the spring of 2023, more than 1,000 international scholars, scientists and business leaders signed a joint declaration urging a stop to the development of the major AI technologies. But what are they afraid of? And how do some of the leading artists of our time respond to the rapid development of artificial intelligence and its impact on contemporary art and society?

Through thought-provoking artworks, the exhibition Poetics of Encryption will present an imaginary landscape containing artistic statements about intelligence, ignorance, information, power and life in the 21st century.

The exhibition is curated by Nadim Samman and initiated by KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, with support by Volkswagen Group. Poetics of Encryption will be shown in a new iteration at Kunsthal Charlottenborg.

Supported by the Augustinus Foundation, the Beckett Foundation, the Danish Art Foundation, the New Carlsberg Foundation, the Obel Family Foundation, the William Demant Foundation.