Psychopathia Sexualis / Ida Sønder Thorhauge: Between Eternity and Time / Carl Emil Jacobsen: Comb a Hairy Doughnut Flat

O—Overgaden Institute for Contemporary Art is one of the leading non-profit contemporary art institutions in Denmark with an irreverent program of emerging local and international voices, producing around eight exhibitions and a plethora of events each year from its location in the heart of Copenhagen.

On the heels of a recent renovation of its 1000-square-meter premises and under the auspices of Director Rhea Dall, O—Overgaden is currently expanding its program.

In-house, the ground floor columned hall is being remodeled in collaboration with designer and occasional artist Filip Berg to become a living communal space supporting artistic exchange, book sales, live acts, debate, and all the impromptu informalities in between, including a new café by Sally-Ginger Brockbank opening later this year. The directorial office has been vacated to make more space for artistic content, as of July hosting the independent project space AYE-AYE, initiated and run by Nina Beier and Simon Dybbroe Møller. In addition, O welcomes Cally Spooner, as associated research fellow in collaboration with the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, to develop a long-term itinerant performance, moonlighting as book, philosophy study, rehearsal, and opera.

Online, graphic designers fanfare are currently developing a new website, centered on the abbreviation “O” as logo and carrying standalone content for remote viewing and visits, as well as designing a new series of publications, edited by Nanna Friis and published both online and in print to expand the in-house solo shows.

This autumn O mounts major solo productions by Ida Sønder Thorhauge and Carl Emil Jacobsen in August, and by Sóley Ragnarsdóttir and Dina El Kaisy Friemuth in November. The latter has prompted a talk series by the cultural workers’ union for BIPOC in Denmark, The Union, hosted at O from September. Meanwhile, in early autumn, the exhibition project Psychopathia Sexualis explores (psycho)pathologized LGBTQIA+ sexualities from the perspective of the highly silenced Danish context.


Psychopathia Sexualis
August 13–October 10, 2021

Zoltan Ará, Karim Boumjimar, Elmgreen & Dragset, Nicolas Maxim Endlicher, Brendan Fernandes, Sidsel Meineche Hansen, Katrine Dirckinck-Holmfeld, Cassie Augusta Jørgensen, Carlos Motta, Niels Nedergaard, Maria Thastum, Maria Wæhrens, and more

Psychopathia Sexualis is a prismatic exhibition project exploring the question of (psycho)pathologized sexualities with particular attention to the HIV/AIDS pandemic and its muted histories from the media to fine arts, from cabaret to activism, in Denmark and beyond. The exhibition—which also includes a podcast produced in collaboration with The Lake Radio and HEN, a t-shirt line co-created with Filip Berg and Han Kjøbenhavn—hijacks its title from the 1886 medical forensic study Psychopathia Sexualis, one of the first books on psychopathology and sexuality by Austrian psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing. The exhibition is curated by Mathias Kryger in collaboration with O—Overgaden and is a part of Copenhagen21—EuroGames & WorldPride.


Ida Sønder Thorhauge: Between Eternity and Time
August 13–October 10, 2021

Unapologetically recapturing painterly clichés such as skulls, horses, nudes, flowers, and butterflies, painter Ida Sønder Thorhauge (b. 1990, Denmark) enters a tradition of expressionism and symbolism to make it her own. In a new series of large-scale oil paintings made especially for her show at O, she traces androgynous figures in a lifecycle from young to old, in which, behind the garlands of recognizable ornaments, lurks a dark, shapeless feeling of unease.


Carl Emil Jacobsen: Comb a Hairy Doughnut Flat
August 13–October 10, 2021

With his grand-scale organic sculptures with coarse or grained surfaces in shades of burned pastel colors, Carl Emil Jacobsen (b. 1987, Denmark) embraces the heavy legacy of modernism in a way that is simultaneously affectionate and crushing. Lying scattered across the stone floor at O, as if they were body parts, oversized tools, or erotic objects of fetishism, his voluptuous sculptural bodies are highly alluring to multiple senses, including the eye.

Team:
Rhea Dall, Director (maternity leave as of August); Aukje Lepoutre Ravn, Curator/Interim Director (as of August); Ida Schyum, Interim Curator (as of August); Line Brædder, Press and Events Coordinator; Toke Martins, Installation Manager.

Support:
O—Overgaden’s main funder is the Danish Arts Council. Further generous supporters include the Aage and Johanne Louis-Hansen Foundation, the Augustinus Foundation, the New Carlsberg Foundation, the Knud Højgaard Foundation, as well as Merchant LF Foght’s Foundation, Beckett-Fonden, Danmarks Nationalbank’s Anniversary Foundation of 1968, the Hielmstierne-Rosencroneske Foundation, and the Bodil Pedersen Foundation.