CHART 2016: CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN
Between worn out car dealers, industrial buildings and blooming creative initiatives in the Nordvest-area lays Copenhagen’s newest gallery district. Last year gallerist Christian Andersen moved here to strengthen his profile and to ensure space for larger exhibitions.
After having worked with photography for years Christian decided to go in a different direction. He started to work at the National Museum of Photography in Copenhagen and subsequently at Galerie Mikael Andersen as a gallery director. After a couple of years at Mikael Andersen’s gallery, Christian decided to start his own, and in the autumn of 2010 the gallery Christian Andersen opened in Kødbyen. Five years later Christian Andersen moved to Nordvest in order to expand his exhibition space.
Christian Andersen in the gallery's storage space | Photo by Rikke Luna & Matias © I DO ART Agency.
In May we visited Christian Andersen and at the time the young danish artist Rolf Nowotny had transformed the gallery space into a creepy swamp area. Nowotny found inspiration in “Zoroku’s Strange Disease,” a morbid story by the japanese horror author Hideshi Hino.
The story is about Zoroku who has a horrible illness that causes him to stink and develop multi-colored boils all over his body. He gets secluded by the village and sentenced to spend his days in isolation at the nearby bog. But when the villagers come to kill him, Zoroku has transformed into a gigantic turtle and has painted the swamp area in colored ink from his leaking boils.
Rolf Nowotny Concloaca at Christian Andersen | All photos by Rikke Luna & Matias © I DO ART Agency.
The story’s weird and disturbing qualities resonates in Rolf Nowotny’s exhibition, CONKCLOACA, which is both intriguing in its tactility and conceptual narrative.
We had Christian sit down in the middle of the installation for a talk about his background, how he meets new artists and much more. See the full interview in the video below that we made in collaboration with Chart Art Fair where Christian Andersen will be present.
Chart Art Fair runs from the 26th - 28th of August, 2016 at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen. More info here.
Rikke Luna Filipsen (f. 1988) og Matias B. Albæk (f. 1988) er kunstformidlere. De stiftede idoart.dk i 2011, og udover at bidrage med artikler, interviews og essays, fungerer de som mediets redaktører. De driver desuden formidlingsbureauet I DO ART Agency samt forlaget I DO ART Books.
