søren martinsen
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GIGANTERNE /THE GIANTS, sorø kunstmuseum (dk), 2018






GIGANTERNE is my newest solo show (2018) in Sorø Kunstmuseum. In a semi-darkened room, a video installation plays a dialogue between two voices, one old and one young, belonging to respectively ancient and new buildings on the images. Around the room's black walls are huge paintings of lonely, atmospheric landscapes, fields, farmland, marsh. A large, complex sculpture mimicks the “architecture” of cheap concrete industry buildings in a freaked-out version, where the buildings grow on top of each other - forming a kind of satellite, hanging in the air in the center of the room. The exhibition, while not site-specific in a strict sense, uses the Sorø, (DK) area as inspiration in all the presented works. Sorø is a pretty typical Danish town, but has a cherished, ancient history relating to the medieval church and cloister and also to the Sorø Academy, which for hundreds of yeas has been a famous boarding school for the elite. Contrasting with the sentimental beauty of the old Sorø, the present-day's ugly and soulless industrial architecture encircles the city. A kind of uneasy friction is set up in the exhibition between the classic and the contemporary landscapes surrounding Sorø and the old and new culture and architecture of the town.