Berørt / Touched at Statens Museum for Kunst

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With restrictions imposed by the lockdown because of the pandemic, Statens Museum for Kunst - the National Gallery in Copenhagen - is still closed but a new exhibition has opened in the gardens at the entrance.

Under the title Berørt or Touched, this is an installation of three large but very different sculptures … works made by artists as their response to the pandemic and inspired by comments and images uploaded for the PARAT project.

Between May and November 2020, Danes were asked to upload photographs and thoughts on the pandemic and, for every one, the COOP donated 5 DKK to Røde Kors, the Danish Red Cross, for them to support vulnerable people through PARAT / READY …. a service from the Red Cross and their volunteers to provide help to collect medicines for vulnerable people confined to their homes; accompany people on walks or on public transport, when they feel unable to do that alone, and to help vulnerable people deal with coronavirus tests and vaccines.

 
 

Benediikte Bjerre (born 1987)
Eee-O- Eleven 2021
Aluminium

The frame forms an outline that appears to be a gigantic laptop computer.

“Benedikte Bjerre's sculpture borrows its form from a familiar consumer product, overscaled here to also delimit a physical space, hinting at the invisible spaces and distancing mechanisms that have emerged during the pandemic.”

 

Sonja Lillebæk Christensen (born 1972)
Skylden / The Blame 2021
LED video collage - loop 12 minutes 30 seconds

A strong recurring theme is hands and the work, with images moving across four screens, looks at many of the new situations in which we now find ourselves.

It explores the paradox that we feel divided and isolated in our own day-to-day lives but we are united, as never before, by a problem that is universal.

 
 

Kaspar Bonnén (born 1968)
JEG TROEDE VI SKULLE BYGGE NOGET OP SAMMEN MEN JEG BLEV VED MED AT GRAVE
I THOUGHT WE WERE GOING TO BUILD SOMETHING TOGETHER BUT I KEPT DIGGING
Mursten / clay bricks

Bonnén is a writer and a visual artist and his work uses salvaged bricks laid out across a bank of grass.

“When we look back at the time of the coronavirus pandemic years from now, what will we have left behind - or abandoned - and what have we created together?”

 
 

the exhibition continues at Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen until 2 May 2021
it will then transfer to other galleries in Denmark and can be seen at:

Kunsthal Aarhus from the 9 May to 20 June 2021
SMK Thy from the 26 June to 15 August 2021
Kunstmuseum Brandts from the 21 August to 24 October 2021

Berørt at Statens Museum for Kunst
berørt.dk
PARAT / READY

Copenhagen moves outdoors ….

As I was taking photographs of the exhibition in the gardens at the front of Statens Museum for Kunst, there was an exercise class for children who had taken over the large circular pond at the front of the gallery - the water is drained through the Winter to protect it from frost - and there were three girls in a line skipping on the steps up to the closed entrance.

Pandemic and the lockdown has changed how people in the city use public space and, if a new appreciation of our squares, streets and parks continues after restrictions lift, then that will be one positive gain to come out of all this.

 
 
 

an addition to the Red Cross Headquarters in Copenhagen by COBE 

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November 2016 - the main structure of the addition in concrete was in place and you could see how the new entrance would work but this was before the brickwork across the terrace had been laid so it was difficult to gain an overall impression

 

A trip out to Trianglen - to see the new Biomega shop - was the chance to have a look at the new entrance building for the Red Cross Headquarters not far away on Blegdamsvej.

Designed by the Copenhagen architectural practice COBE, models of the building were shown in the exhibition Our Urban Living Room at the Danish Architecture Centre at the end of 2016 and I had seen the work in progress several times through 2017 but this was the first time I had been to that part of the city since the work was completed.

A three-storey office building here dates from the 1950s and is on an unusual plot - very wide but quite shallow with the main road across the front but with the building set back from the pavement with open public space at the front and with the back of the building hard against the boundary of Fælledparken which is the largest and perhaps the most important public open space in the city … so there was no possibility to extend the building back.

The solution was to build a new range out across the front that fans out from the original entrance and with its highest point against the building but sloping or rather stepping down to the pavement. In a way it is like one quarter of a pyramid if it was cut down the corner angles.

This new structure leaves triangular courtyards or green areas to each side to let light into the original office windows on the existing frontage but also reconfigures these as more enclosed and private spaces with the new building shielding them from the street and the noise of passing traffic.

Rooms under the slope, with a large new foyer in the west part, are lit by full height windows at the back that look into these green areas and look towards the existing range. 

Perhaps a better way of thinking about this is not as a new addition across the front but as a scheme that retains all the original open and public space across the front but tips part of it up at an angle and slips new rooms and new facilities underneath. This idea is, of course, close to what COBE did at Israels Plads where there are triangles of steps across two angles of the square which provide elevated areas where people sit to enjoy the sun or sit to eat a snack from the nearby food halls or just sit to watch other people but here, at the Red Cross building, on a larger scale. It is hoped that at Blegdamsvej this stepped slope will become an equally popular public space.

The brick steps are broken by the entrance to the building that creates what is, in effect, a small entrance court … a device used by COBE at, for instance Forfatterhuset, to form an interim public space where people arriving and leaving can stand and talk … not actually on the public pavement but directly off it … so it's the idea of a transitional space from public to private and from outside to inside. Also, it clearly signals to someone new to the building where they should enter … so this is COBE’s modern version of a portico but more about circulation and drawing the visitor in rather than being more overtly about status.

COBE

May 2018