Abandon the ParentsCurated by Henrik Olesen
23 May 2014 – 28 September 2014
An abundance of paintings, drawings, photographs, videos, books, words, and sounds fill the x-rummet venue, establishing surprising connections and creating new narratives. The rich and complex accumulation of objects explores and interprets the process of emancipation and independence that may – or may not – happen in the life of an andolescent leaving his or her parents to seek out new values.
The Danish artist Henrik Olesen has invited two long-term collaborators, friends, and gallerists – Daniel Buchholz and Christopher Müller – to join him in curating the exhibition Abandon the Parents in x-rummet. Here, they present an overwhelming collection of paintings, books, photographs, videos, sounds, and drawings created by Ariane Müller, Judith Scott, Lutz Bacher, Jean Genet, Richard Hawkins, Dieter Roth, Zoe Leonard, Lili Elbe, Arthur Köpcke, Kristian Zarthman, Wolfgang Tillmans, Hannah Hoech, Henriette Heise, Gerry Bibby, Albert Mertz and Galerie Krise from Berlin.
See a selection of the works on display
The exhibition presents a collection of approximately 250 objects, together creating new meaning and significance by entering into alternative connections. The exhibition acts as a single, vast collage that offers one possible take on the process of identity-building that we all experience in our lives. Abandon the Parents explores the borderland that all human beings occupy when we leave behind the familiar – our “parents” – to venture out into unknown territory in search of our identity.
A personal starting point for a universal narrative
The combination of works presented here springs from the three curators’ personal process of exploration – they have selected works, stories, and artists in which they frame a space that contextualizes artistic production and self-organization. Adressing the decisive moments in the construction of an identity. The exhibition presents three interwoven homosexual autobiographies, but it also points to the mechanisms, desires, and intuitions that serve as the building blocks for our identities as human beings.
Many of the artists featured in the exhibition have served as important guiding lights for Olesen’s own artistic endeavours. They are role models and sources of inspiration that have shaped his artistic work and his search for his own identity.
Read more about Henrik Olesen
While the exhibition takes a personal point of departure, the complex collection of artefacts in x-rummet also conveys a universal narrative about the search for and construction of identity that we are all undergoing all the time.
A challenging exhibition
Abandon the Parents rethinks the classical exhibition format and challenges the autonomy of the work of art. In this exhibition all works are of equal value. Regardless of whether they happen to be copies, originals, history paintings, letters, or sound recordings. All works have meaning and significance, and they are all important components in relating the story of self-empowerment, of making a break with the past in a quest of new values.
In this way, Abandon the Parents eschews the museum’s usual art historical perspective, offering up an alternative art history that is formulated from a subjective perspective, based on a homosexual life experience.
More information here.
(Text from National Gallery of Denmark)
Archival Exhibition Posters
Dwight Mackintosh, Untitled, 1988, Ink and Prismacolor on paper
Louis Estape, Untitled, 2001, Pen on paper
George Kellogg, Untitled, 1984, Ink and tempera paint on paper
