12 Feb 2010

Overgaden presents Jakob Jakobsen and Jeanette Hillig

Jakob Jakobsen: Image Politics – Fragments of Contemporary History Considered as Tragedy

A city begins to burn as you move through the blacked-out gallery, and a total installation draws you into a world of poetry and destruction. Like a theatrical performance in three acts, dramatic films and pictures unfold around you as you make your way through a war zone, a refugee camp and an urban space to the sound of a captivating choir.

In his first major solo exhibition at a Danish art institution, Jakob Jakobsen (b. 1965) will visualise aspects of our recent contemporary history and challenge the role of the image as a political tool and phenomenon in today's society. In the exhibition, the Territory, the Camp and the City are studied as scenes of current political conflicts and pictorial representations which influence the shaping of attitudes in society. The Territory will be examined through a documentary on the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, the Camp via pictures from the 2008 Close the Camp demonstration against the Sandholm Refugee Centre, and the City on the basis of images of the district of Nørrebro in flames on the nights of the 1st and 2nd of March 2007, following the storming of the Youth House.

Jakob Jakobsen's exhibition confronts the bombardment of the public by images created by the media, artists and filmmakers, and the ways in which these images affect us. Wars and conflicts are often expressed in the form of a struggle to control images. Like a modern history painting with a dreamlike character, the exhibition depicts a society falling apart. But out of the tragedy grows the hope that something new can emerge ...


Jeanette Hillig: Last Visit to Brøndby Strand

A toilet seat, a dinghy, skis and lamps with yellow, green and white paint poured over them – step into a spatial spectacle of strong colours and appealing visual forms. At her solo exhibition at Overgaden, Jeanette Hillig (b. 1977) presents a series of entirely new works which inquisitively rediscover objects in the borderland between painting and sculpture.

Everyday utensils are treated in a playful manner in Jeanette Hillig's universe. Things are pulled out of their usual contexts and forced into new constellations, where the intrinsic properties of the objects once again reassert themselves: the belt tightens, the spear impales, the elastic stretches, etc. Hillig regards sculpture as made up of composite surfaces, and treats the materials – whether wall-mounted or free-standing – in an equivalent manner. On the one hand subtle and playful, and on the other precise and perfectionist, the works vacillate between disciplined and uncontrollable expressions.

With whimsical titles such as Tina Turner's hairdresser and 20 minutes in the Føtex Customer Centre, Jeanette Hillig opens up the works to narrative. But behind the apparent lightness lies an intense interest in the materials, a desire to demystify visual art and an ambitious approach to the possibilities of painting. When Jeanette Hillig pulls paintings off the wall and spreads them around the room, she does so from a desire to invite the viewer right into the picture to explore what painting is, and can become.