With the exhibition The Void Michael Würtz Overbeck examines how great existential questions can leave humans in a state of doubt and alienation. What happens when the search for meaning in life is experienced as futile? And how do we gain foothold, when we realise that the answers we seek, may not exist at all? In The Void, the artworks each unfold aspects of the existential emptiness and the overwhelming feeling of discouragement that can follow such reflections.
The artwork, The Desolation of Mankind (2020), is a construction in the space, where a human skull, coated with black pigment, is jammed between two large panels. The skull seems lonesome, sacred, and inconsolable as a monument to the death we cannot refuse. The drawing, Not Part Of Me (2020), depicts a human hand, left like an empty holster. Here, the human body in its transience can be experienced as a container that is filled with nothing but emptiness. In the artwork, Everything Will Fade Away (2020), the viewer stands in front of a dark diorama, which is only dimly lit by a milky glass sphere. The space and the luminous glass sphere are mirrored in infinity until they get lost in the darkness and dissolve – an allegory of everything’s disappearance.
Biography
Michael Würtz Overbeck (b. 1982) lives and works in Copenhagen. He graduated from The Funen Art Academy in 2010. Würtz Overbeck works with drawing, objects, installations, and video. His artistic practice revolves around existential aspects of human existence and the transience of life. Würtz Overbeck exhibited at Overgaden Institute for Contemporary Art, Møsting’s House, and Spanien 19C among others. In 2014, The Danish Arts Foundation’s Committee for Visual Arts awarded his solo exhibition In the Interim of Being and the Void at MOHS Exhibit. Furthermore, Würtz Overbeck is a founding member of the artist-run project room and studio collective OK Corral.