Henrik Olesen at Malmö Konsthall

Henrik Olesen
Malmö Konsthall
4 December 2010 – 30 January 2011

Henrik Olesen is one of Denmark’s most important contemporary artists. Over the past 12 years he has gained an international reputation. Despite such success, this exhibition at Malmö Konsthall is his first major show in the Nordic region.

The exhibition includes both new works and older ones. Olesen presents a selection of his works from the past 15 years in combination with using Malmö Konsthall’s architecture to create site-specific interventions. The exhibition thereby gives the public the opportunity to see the artist’s development and his works in relation to each other, while Olesen also creates a new major installation in the exhibition space.

In his works Olesen questions power relationships and how our history has been written. He focuses on and explores homosexuality based on the political consequences of daily life, the media and society’s power structures. As a starting point for this exploration he draws on both contemporary and historical materials from such varied fields as architecture, law, economics (the geographic and demographic distribution of capital), natural science and art history. Olesen introduces the homosexual body into spaces and interiors from the late 19th and early 20th centuries in order to draw our attention to the general repression and suppression of homosexuality throughout history. He explores, breaks and also comes to terms with the heterosexual structures which have held society in an iron grip throughout history.