Future exhibitions

12 May 2012 – 22 July 2012

TREFFPUNKT : BERLIN 
  

The city of Berlin is an attractive and inspiring place to live for artists from around the world. The diversity, the pace, the fairly low rent and not least the international environment make it a unique venue and a magic magnet for anyone concerned with contemporary art. As Berlin has a strong attraction on young aspiring artists with no or little money, the city's mayor, Klaus Wowereit, has even branded Berlin as "arm aber sexy".

ARKEN’s exhibition TREFFPUNKT : BERLIN brings together a number of artists with strong ties to Berlin. The works outline an ambiguous picture of Berlin's considerable importance as a practical and conceptual source of inspiration for much of the art that flows from Berlin today. Through photography, installation, sculpture, neon, collage, sound and video, the works concretize the experience of urban Berlin. Common to the works is a dedicated engagement in the social, cultural and architectural reality. The exhibition includes detections of urban atmospheres, stories about the city's structured chaos and studies of the utopias that relate to Berlin's unique combination of past and present time.

Based on the artists' statements from and on the hot and hypermodern capital, TREFFPUNKT : BERLIN shows how artists continue to be inspired by and relate to the brutal yet intoxicating city. A unique and existential urban experience is captivated in the contemporary art from and on the city of Berlin.

Image: Courtesy Johann König, Berlin, 303 Gallery, New York and Galleri Nicolai Wallner, Copenhagen.




18 August 2012 – 13 January 2013

INDIA : ART NOW 
  

Over the past decade India has made its mark as one of the most vital and innovative centres of contemporary art. With great creativity and intellectual depth a new generation of artists is reacting to the rapid changes typifying the globalized cities of the world’s largest democracy.

In the autumn of 2012 ARKEN is devoting its whole special exhibition area to a comprehensive presentation of Indian contemporary art. The prominent artists and artist groups are Rina Banerjee, Hemali Bhuta, Atul Dodiya, Sheela Gowda, Shilpa Gupta, Subodh Gupta, Jitish Kallat, Reena Kallat, Rashmi Kaleka, Bharti Kher, Ravinder Reddy, Vivan Sundaram and Thukral & Tagra. The artists in the exhibition lose themselves in the chaos of urban life or seek out a quieter, inner life. They describe the dreams of a new generation and expose social conflicts. With paintings, sculptures, photography, installations and interactive art the exhibition offers unique insight into the aesthetic spectrum within which artists today are interpreting our existence on the borderline between the local and the global.

INDIAN CONTEMPORARY ART is a wide-ranging presentation of the new art of India with a whole array of related activities such as lecture evenings, educational processes for children and the young, and a festival programme of Indian films at the Copenhagen Film Festival.

The project is associated with a research programme at ARKEN on contemporary art and migration, which will result in a conference and a book.

Meet one of the artists
Shortcuts to Indian contemporary art

The exhibition is part of the project INDIA TODAY - COPENHAGEN TOMORROW

18 August 2012 – 13 January 2013  

INDIA : FASHION NOW

The Indian fashion scene has experienced a global breakthrough in recent years.

Over the past ten years a brand new fashion scene has grown up in India, where we see young Indian designers challenging and experimenting with the traditional dress culture. They are trans-forming Indian fashion with sophisticated style experiments and pushing the envelope of what Indian fashion can be. Elegantly or teasingly, the creations of the young designers build bridges between the local and the global, between past and present.

ARKEN is showing colourful, witty, imaginative, sculptural and experimental creations by the seven most prominent young designers: Morphe by Amit Aggarwal, Little Shilpa, Manish Arora, Sabyasachi Mukherjee, Prashant Verma, Varun Sardana and 11.11 by Cell DSGN.

The exhibition is part of the project INDIA TODAY - COPENHAGEN TOMORROW

2 February – 2 June 2013

CARL-HENNING PEDERSEN

To mark Carl-Henning Pedersen’s 100th birthday, ARKEN, in collaboration with Carl-Henning Pedersen’s & Else Alfelt’s Museum in Herning, is showing a major exhibition of the work of this Danish Cobra artist.

Like many other artists of his time, Carl-Henning Pedersen drew freely on inspiration from the art and artefacts of other times and other cultures. In his wildly imaginative imagery, widely different visual idioms flow together across time and place. In his art, the artist sought the same special, universally human primal force that surged through his own being. The exhibition elucidates this theme through the selection and presentation of his works.

The longing for a pure, unspoiled, natural art was typical of the period. Carl-Henning Pedersen and his colleagues thus expressed their opposition to their own time, haunted as it was by war and injustice.