Contemporary art is art created in our own time. The term is generally used to describe art made from around 1990 to the present day, but contemporary art is not only defined by when a work was created. It is also about how art engages with the world we live in today.

There is no single style or medium that defines contemporary art. A work might be a painting, an installation, a performance, a film, or something that directly involves the audience. Many contemporary artists work across different media and explore subjects such as identity, technology, power, climate, community, and freedom.

For this reason, contemporary art can sometimes feel more open-ended or challenging than older forms of art. The works do not always offer one clear answer or a straightforward narrative. Instead, they invite us to experience, sense, and reflect. You do not have to understand everything immediately. Often, meaning emerges through the encounter between the artwork and the viewer.

At ARKEN, visitors encounter contemporary art that is sensory, political, humorous, and thought-provoking. Simone Aaberg Kærn's monumental installation Open Sky documents the artist's journey from Denmark to Kabul in 2002 to teach an Afghan woman how to fly. The work explores themes of freedom, borders, and the right to movement while demonstrating how contemporary art can bring together performance, documentation, and physical installation in a single work.

^{Simone Aaberg Kærn, Open Sky (2024). Photo: Anders Sune Berg}

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In Rasmus Myrup's practice, contemporary art becomes a space where history and identity can be reinterpreted. In Outside Salon de Refusés, visitors encounter seven mythological figures standing outside a nightclub that humans are not allowed to enter. The sculptures are both humorous and captivating, while also exploring queer narratives, power, and Nordic cultural history.

^{Rasmus Myrup, Outside Salon de Refusés (Installation view). Photo: Anders Sune Berg}

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Modern Art vs. Contemporary Art – What's the Difference?

Modern art and contemporary art are often confused, but they refer to different periods and different ways of understanding art.

Modern art emerged in the late nineteenth century and continued throughout much of the twentieth century. Artists such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse broke away from traditional ways of painting and representing the world. They experimented with colour, form, and perspective, questioning what art could be.

Contemporary art builds on many of these experiments but is generally less concerned with fixed styles and more interested in ideas, experiences, and the issues shaping our world today. While modern art often focused on reinventing the language of art itself, contemporary art is more likely to investigate the realities and structures of contemporary society.

This is evident in Nina Beier and Bob Kil's performative work Life Guardians, in which five marble lions are accompanied by performers executing choreographed movements. The work explores the relationship between body, image, and power, using humour to challenge our assumptions about authority and control.

^{Nina Beier, Guardians (2023). Photo: Anders Sune Berg}

^{Bob Kil, Life (2022). Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, September 2024. Photo: Ximena Fargas}

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Humour and critique are also central to Elmgreen & Dragset's iconic sculpture Powerless Structures, Fig. 101, located outside ARKEN. At first glance, the six-metre-tall boy on a rocking horse resembles a traditional equestrian monument. Instead of celebrating power and heroism, however, the sculpture honours imagination, playfulness, and vulnerability. In doing so, it turns familiar symbols upside down—an approach that characterises much of contemporary art.

^{Elmgreen & Dragset, Powerless Structures, Fig. 101, 2012. Photo: Henrik Jauert}

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Contemporary art therefore does not require viewers to "understand" a work in the correct way. What matters most is curiosity: What does this artwork do to me? What thoughts or emotions does it evoke?

Perhaps that is the defining quality of contemporary art: it does not provide ready-made answers but opens up new ways of seeing the world.

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