Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen: Nye Malerier

2 jun 20231 jul 2023

It is a great pleasure for us to be able to invite you to the exhibition ‘The Surge’ with Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen. With ‘The Surge’, the artist continues his ongoing exploration of the relationship between modern architecture and the climate crisis. From the beginning, modern architecture was the child of a new industrial culture based on fossil fuels and a new abstract idiom that enabled the mass production of private housing.

Thus 1948 became a year which marks the beginning of what cultural history calls ‘The Great Acceleration’; it was a time when the perimeters of all modern major cities were built up with single-family houses. The phenomenon of suburbs took shape. It also became a moment in human history when a series of socio-economic changes coincided with the deterioration of the natural world.

In the exhibition we find several images of single-family houses, built in the language of modernism, but with the usual twist in perspective, cropping and atmosphere, which is so characteristic of Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen’s painterly work.

Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen lives and works in Copenhagen. He has an MFA from the Royal Danish Academy, and from 2007 – 2015 he lived in Berlin. Most recently, the monograph ‘One World or None – Planetary Aesthetics in the Ruins of Modernism’ was published by Forlaget Aftryk with texts by art critic Louise Steiwer. The book charts the development of his artistic practice and how, regardless of medium, he tries to carve out a new space for contemporary art and the possibility of dealing with the climate crisis.

In 2021, the Kastrupgaard collection presented an extensive exhibition of Havsteen-Mikkelsen’s works, in 2022 he was part of the group exhibition at Kunsthal Charlottenborg: ‘One if by Land, Two if by Sea’, curated by New Red Order, and in September 2023 he participates in the group exhibition: ‘Copenhagen, Copenhagen’ in Nikolaj Kunsthal. His works are represented in Europe, the USA and South Korean collections.