ØST - A COUNTERFACTUAL EXHIBITION WITH MARIA WÆHRENS
Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art, Oslo Plads 1, 2100 Copenhagen
The artist group Høst – with its trolls, elves and mythical creatures, and inspiration from the currents of Vitalism – expanded the boundaries of life and freedom in a time when the destruction of all life on the planet had become a tangible threat. In our own time, themes of life and freedom continue to crop up in the light of society’s fragmentation and state of crisis. What does freedom look like today – if it even exists and is not merely a utopian ideal?
This question serves as the starting point for revisiting the spontaneous-abstract artists of the Høst group and engaging in dialogue with the life forms, myths and diversity of creatures that populate their images. The annual Høst exhibition ran at Den Frie from 1934 to 1949, at which point it disbanded and the abstract artists continued together in the newly formed Cobra. Høst – A Counterfactual Exhibition speculates on what a Høst exhibition might have looked like today if the group still existed.
Read more about the exhibition here.
Photos: Malle Madsen
