Kirsten Justesen
Ice Script – Meltingtime #17
16 November–25 December 2013
Overgaden Institute of Contemporary Art
Overgaden neden Vandet 17
DK-1414 København K
Overgaden introduces its new exhibition format REVISIT with a major solo exhibition by the Danish artist Kirsten Justesen. The exhibition focuses on Justesen’s long-term, in-depth work with ice as a material.
REVISIT is Overgaden’s new exhibition format, celebrating the artistic long haul by revisiting key exhibitions and projects in the history of Overgaden—exploring and understanding them from a contemporary perspective. REVIST starts in 2013, with a major two-story solo exhibition of the work of Kirsten Justesen, marking the 20th anniversary of her iconic exhibition Smeltetid #5 at Overgaden. Ice Script – Meltingtime #17 links new and past works, examining Justesen’s systematic and consistent use of ice as a focus of her art and research.
For more than 30 years ice has been pivotal to Kirsten Justesen’s art practice, and the exhibition includes a broad spectrum of works that use and relate to this cold element in relationship to time, metamorphosis and the body. Visitors will be able to experience or re-experience Justesen’s dresses of ice, as well as her ice hands and feet. The exhibition also includes brand new ice melting mobiles, as well as objects and documentation charting the artistic process behind the works.
A central and spectacular element of the exhibition is the creation of an ice runway on the ground floor of Overgaden. This path of ice will, among other things, provide a stage for three new commissioned performances by the artists Jens Haaning, Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen and Henrik Plenge Jacobsen, who Kirsten Justesen has invited to extend her exhibition concept.
The exhibition will be the last in which Kirsten Justesen uses ice as a material. This will be marked with a closing celebration on 25 December, the last day of the exhibition and Kirsten Justesen’s birthday.
Kirsten Justesen (b. 1943) has been a pivotal figure for the last 50 years of Danish art history. She is a pioneer of contemporary, feminist art, and her art practice embraces sculpture and set design, as well as lecturing and political activism. In recent years her works have been central to key exhibitions like WACK – Art and the Feminist Revolution at MoMA in New York, Human at Musee d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain in Nice, and Meltingtime # 16 at Archivio Emily Harvey in Venice.
The exhibition catalogue ICE SCRIPT will be published at Gyldendal Publishing House on December 12.
