This’s and that’s is American artist Amy O’Neill’s first institutional exhibition in Denmark produced in collaboration with artist Gianna Surangkanjanajai and curator Line Ebert. This’s and that’s is the third exhibition in the newly initiated OSLO programme at Den Frie, presenting commissioned solo projects produced specifically for the sub-level gallery. In an architecture of memory, the show delves into reflections on innocence and shadows cast by progress.

Inside the skeletal and reshaped structure of the previous OSLO show, a cinematic tableau of quilts, garments, and figures holding poses fills the exhibition space. The mise en scène is at a primary level both tactile and permeable: The block-patterned quilts are hung to become wall panels as well as backdrops for the attires. Similarly transformative, these textile pieces are all kinds of wearable props such as vestments, stoles, veils, and masks. Sewn into, or printed, drawn, and projected on top of all these surfaces, are mash-ups of figures that include, among others, the TV witch Witchipoo, a Frankensteinian Beethoven, Arthur Herbert Fonzarelli, and Goya’s straw doll. The dramaturgical overlay is the ancient game of snakes and ladders, offering an account of the intertwined contingencies of luck, decisions, and accountability.

On the opening night, a procession-like performance will animate the garments inside the holding environment, thereby completing the installation of the exhibition. The otherwise open choreography centers around the movement of descending and aligns with the intersections of communal actions and vulnerability. A text by commissioned writer Jennifer Krasinski will be read on the occasion and included in the exhibition pamphlet along with a contribution by Line Ebert.

Working mainly with installation, drawing, and film, both as material and form, Amy O’Neill is concerned with (over)determined spaces and symbolic intermediaries that allow the desires of makers and receivers to intersect. And much like other instances of her work, the subterranean staging at Den Frie has an indeterminate temporality, just as concerned with what is absent as with what is present in the space. The garbs’ flatness and the silhouettes’ hollowed bodies point to this a-historicity, which resonates uncannily in the current vertigo of topsy-turvy interregnums and global tipping points.

 

About the artists

Amy O’Neill began exhibiting in the late 1990s and while installation, drawing, and film can be considered as her primary mediums, her most recent works have frequently included tailored looks, prompting one to think more about socio-cultural and affective textures than the interiority of an art object. O’Neill works in New York and has had numerous solo exhibitions at institutions such as Doyers, New York; Paula Cooper Gallery, New York; MAMCO, Geneva; Swiss Institute, Paris and New York; Le Consortium, Dijon and MoMA PS1, New York.

 

Gianna Surangkanjanajai and Line Ebert co-founded and ran the exhibition space Red Tracy in Nørrebro, Copenhagen, with artist Andreas Rønholt Schmidt, from 2020-2022. They have collaborated and been in conversation since then, mainly circling around the formations of feminist attitudes and the moment these slip into public discourse. The invitation by Den Frie to work on a commission for OSLO, has given the conversation a new expression and furthermore continues the curatorial practice of Den Frie where collective efforts and durational conversations are essential.

 

About OSLO

OSLO presents three yearly exhibitions of new solo projects by contemporary artists produced specifically for Den Frie. The OSLO exhibition programme continues Den Frie’s legacy as well as historic function as ‘the artists’ house’, a space with a long history for curating exhibitions and realizing works of art in close collaboration with artists. The name OSLO is a reference to Den Frie’s location on Oslo Plads and an anagram for solo. Admission to OSLO is always free.

 

Find the exhibition pamphlet here

Find the list of works here

Find a comic here

Find Louisiana Channel’s interview with Amy O’Neill here

Crocodiles emerged around 200 million years ago, and when looking at the crocodiles that exist today, they bear a surprising resemblance to their distant ancestors. Although they have evolved over time, they nonetheless serve as windows into the past—a world before or without humans. Olesen’s crocodiles, such as The earliest Crocodilian, circa 95 million years ago or American Alligator, circa 83.5 million years ago, are made from materials like plaster, wood, chicken wire, and canvas, painted in shimmering greenish and black hues. They are both naturalistic and artificial, rough with visible traces of their physical construction and painting process—unstable as images, at once menacing and endangered. They embody a dormant wildness and velocity. Past and present seem to short-circuit, introducing a broader time horizon and evoking affects beyond the constant 24/7 attention of the present.

The exhibition by Henrik Olesen consists of new works as well as pieces created by the artist in recent years: images of raw meat printed on plastic, castings of milk cartons in epoxy, sculptural boxes with silkscreened images and texts, paintings on masonite and canvas, informational texts and flyers, and panels depicting homosexuality and punishment throughout 500 years of art history. The exhibition also includes recreations of earlier works within new installations. Images and symbols morph into one another, are consumed, and transform into an open system or food chain where hierarchies are destabilized. It is an open and unresolved universe, interwoven across themes such as vulnerability, violence, the body, identity, history and natural history, humans and animals.

The paintings, such as (rotten sun), 2020 or Body of Shit 2, 2020, reference the body’s interior and digestive system as plastic processes of absorption, breakdown, transformation, and excretion—where images and symbols are ground up and either metabolized into new energy or discarded as waste. Everything in the exhibition is shaped by a plastic consciousness and sensibility: processes of application, scraping, and the formation of new layers. The box sculptures are empty stomachs digesting their two- and three-dimensional contents. They are juxtaposed with art historical charts (with connections to sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld’s boards from the interwar period), a nonlinear collection of images that attach to and detach from concepts of bodies, power, and desire.

 

For press images please contact Nikola Nedeljkovic Gøttsche at nng@denfrie.dk

Koloristerne 2025 is continuing the renewal of the artist association that has been going on in recent years. Four of the recent members, Ida Kvetny, Asger Harbou Gjerdevik, Maria Wæhrens, and Hartmut Stockter, have collectively invited a large group of guest exhibitors working with new approaches to painting, sculpture, installation, photography, video and digital media. The 2025-exhibition will be showcasing  works by 17 of the permanent members of the group as well as 11 guest artists. The oldest artists participating is 97 years old and the youngest two are 31 years old.

Spanning different generations and media the shows’ aim is to reflect on the complex challenges of our contemporary world from a poetic and sensual point of departure; to create a space for investigations and original artistic manifestations and to challenge and transform traditional ways of working. It is vital for Koloristerne to communicate and expand their exhibition to new audiences. During the exhibition period they will thus be arranging guided tours, musical events and artist talks. More info on these events will be announced on Den Frie’s website.

The artist association Koloristerne was founded in 1932 by the artists John Christensen, Gitz Johansen, Knud Nellemose, and Povl Søndergaard, among others. Their vision was to organize and make possible an undogmatic response to the modernist art and culture of this period. The Colorists strived to present a more sensual and realistic approach to subject matter in contrast to the cool abstractions of the modernist movement. In their recent exhibitions they have purposively strived to vitalize the association and to ensure its ongoing development and diversity in relation to age and gender.

Over the course of the past eight years, Will Benedict and Steffen Jørgensen have collaborated on an ongoing video series called The Restaurant, showcasing episodes in various exhibition contexts. The series is set in the ruins of a Parisian skyscraper, surrounded by dense jungle, where we are introduced to a variety of human and non-human characters who cook, serve, search for meaning, and fail in their attempts at being productive members of society.

In Season 2, presented here at Den Frie, we follow a police detective and owner of Café Wha? as she aggressively questions customers on their eating habits, their relationship with “hanger”, and the effect food has on their lives in general. In the shadow of The Restaurant, a humanoid blue chicken and a man with ears for eyes host a science podcast for a small group of barn animals. With the aid of experts in the fields of bio-engineering, physics and zoology the program explores the world of the microbiome, the origins of fat, and what it would be like to live on an earth made entirely of blueberries. Over the course of each episode we meet a melancholy moon, a T-Rex stuck in an outhouse, a disenfranchised scarecrow and a half man, half snail making the essential deliveries that hold this world together.

The elaborate installation of Season 2 places the viewer in the middle of this world, complete with a kitchen, toilet and bed along with all the other vital corporeal necessities a conscious organism could need.

 

Steffen Jørgensen

Steffen Jørgensen (*1983, Denmark) is a graduate from the Funen Art Academy in Odense and the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna. In Denmark, he is particularly known for his projects with the artists’ collective Years and for collaborations with fellow artists Robert Kjær Clausen and Allan Nicolaisen. Internationally, he has worked with American artist Will Benedict for many years. Their collaborative works have been shown at venues such as the Art Sonje Center, Seoul, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva (in conjunction with the Biennial of the Moving Image ‘21), and UCCA, Beijing. His latest solo show, Civilizsia, was presented at Tranen, Gentofte. He lives and works on the Danish island of Møn and is represented by the Bianca D’Alessandro Gallery.

 

Will Benedict

Will Benedict (*1978, Los Angeles) incorporates elements of advertising, choreography, music, graphic design and collage in a range of media such as paintings, photos, posters, performances and video. In his works, he seeks to address the various conditions and potential conflicts that underpin production and collaboration. He has recently exhibited at the Bourse du Commerce – Pinault Collection, Paris, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva, Basement Roma, Rome, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Art Sonje Center, Seoul, dépendance, Brussels, Galerie Balice Hertling, Paris, Overduin & Co., Los Angeles, Gio Marconi, Milan; Fondazione Giuliani, Rome, Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen; and Halle für Kunst, Lüneburg. He lives and works in Paris.

 

The OSLO exhibition programme

The Restaurant: Season 2 is the second instalment in Den Frie’s exhibition programme OSLO, which presents newly produced works by contemporary artists. The OSLO programme continues Den Frie’s historical legacy as ‘The Artists’ House’; a place with a long history of curating exhibitions and selecting works in close collaboration with artists. Every year, Den Frie will present a total of three OSLO exhibitions in the lower floor gallery. The name OSLO is a reference to Den Frie’s location, Oslo Plads, as well as an anagram for solo.

The exhibition Extralys (transl. Extra Light), presented by the artist association Decembristerne, explores the physical, sensory, and metaphorical qualities of light and its fundamental connection to visual art. The exhibition is grounded in the concept that all standard electric lighting at Den Frie will be turned off for the duration of the show, redirecting attention to the natural light — the way it streams through the large overhead windows and shifts in tone and intensity over the course of each day.

The participating artists engage with this distinctive lighting arrangement in separate ways. Some have introduced external light sources to illuminate their work, while others use light from within their pieces. This year’s exhibition features not only Decembristerne’s core members but also nine guest artists from different generations and various artistic backgrounds, bringing a rich mix of perspectives and styles. Extralys is coordinated by artists Bodil Nielsen, Ane Mette Ruge, and Torgny Wilcke.

On the final day of the exhibition, Sunday, January 5, there will be a public performance event organized by artist Heine Klausen with performances by Ditte Krøyer, Favn Vium, Heine Klausen, Emil Keller Skouvsen and others. Participation is included with the entrance fee, and additional details on the program will be available soon.

 

About Decembristerne

Founded in 1928 by artists Svend Albrectsen, Søren Hjorth Nielsen, Holger J. Jensen, Erik Sievert, and Jørgen Thomsen, the artist association Decembristerne emerged as a response to existing art groups, aiming to establish an independent exhibition platform. Unlike other collectives, Decembristerne has never adhered to a unified artistic program. Instead, it celebrates the individuality of its members, fostering a diverse and personal approach to art. Over the years, the group has included renowned figures such as Oda Knudsen, Henry Heerup, Hans Christian Rylander, Kurt Trampedach, Inge Ellegaard, Jens Birkemose, Richard Winther, and Anna Klindt Sørensen. For nearly a century, with few exceptions, Decembristerne has maintained a strong tradition of showcasing their works at Den Frie, underscoring their enduring presence in the Danish art scene.