On April 15 we erect the impaled polar bear-sculpure ‘Unbearable’ in front of the Danish Parliament in Copenhagen. The Green Party arrange the exhibition in cooperation with Jens Galschiot. The exhibition will put focus on the climate crisis. In relation to the exhibition, a number of debates will take place in the Danish parliament and other activities will happen around Copenhagen.
The latest climate news give a bleak picture of the future to come, so the exhibition is very much needed.The Danish government seems not to have notices the alarming situation at all. Instead it opens up for more Danish CO2 emissions.
Programme: Friday April 15 - Erection of the sculpture (10am-4pm) and official opening of the exhibition (4pm-5pm). If you are in Denmark you are more than welcome to participate – send me a mail and I will make sure you get all the information you need.
Polar Bear Army takes on New York
We are working with the Danish artist Jacob Fuglsang Mikkelsen who is arranging to bring our Polar Bear Army (which was extremely popular during COP21 in Paris) to New York. The ’army’ is to participate in a lot of climate activities in New York from April 17. to April 22. Amongst other things Earth Day, POLAR BEAR CO2 RIDE and a Union Square Event – activities that are expected to attract more than 100.000 people.
At the demonstrations one will also find a large copper sculpture model of the big Unbearable sculpture. At present the model can be found at the office of the President of the United Nations General Assembly, Mogens Lykketofts in New York.
Women Conference denies Galschiøts sculptures due to possitive focus...
The sculpture 550+1 which focus on prostitution and trafficking was meant to be exhibited at the Women conference Women Deliver in Denmark from May 16-19 this year. So was the sculpture 'In The Name of God' (a pragnent crucified teenager) which deals with womens right to sexual information and the right to use contraceptives.
But even though most women groups find the sculptures’ messages to be of vital importance, the conference has chosen not to exhibit the sculptures – instead focussing on the ”The cenferences uplifting mood and solution oriented theme”
It seems the women organisations in charge are affraid of critisizing the Catholic Church, which actively forbids the use of contraceptives and sexual education. We believe that it is absolutely absurd to ignore that so many of the world's women are actually suppressed through religious movements. This is a discussion everybody wants to take when it comes to Muslim women lacking basic rights, but when it comes to the Christian church oppressing, all the rights movements become quiet.
Galschiøt also suggested to invite the Nicaraguan Catholic women's rights movement "Catolicas por el Derecho a Decidir", to Denmark for the conference. They are actively using Galschiøts sculpture in their struggle for women's rights. But this too seems to have the wrong focus.
At Gallery Galschiøt, we are frankly quite resentful. We were officially invited to the initial conference meetings which lead up to the Women Deliver conference, and already last spring we presented the sculptures.
Galschiøt has abandoned the idea of exhibiting at Women Deliver as he does not believe that it is the mission of art to focus on trafficking and ban on contraception in an "an uplifting and solution-oriented" way.
Memorial Exhibition - goodbye to a Mexican friend and super naturalistic
In 2009, the Mexican painter and sculptor Emmanuel Cruz worked and lived at our workshop studio in Denmark. Recently he tragically died a too early death after an accident, falling from a 6 meter high staircase. As an artist, he was hyper-realist and able to make extremely accurate representation of reality, both when he painted and when he modeled.
As an artist, he was going through an interesting developments and he had great success. The world has lost a talent that could have come a long way. He is probably one of the artisanal best talented artists we have ever had at the workshop and we still have many works he has helped create when he was here.
We have made a memorial exhibition with some of his paintings and photos at Gallery Galschiøt. The exhibition is open daily, free of charge, at Banevænget 22, Odense Denmark.
Fundamentalism / The Children of Abraham
– Next to City Hall Square in Copenhagen
No newsletter without an update from Galschiøts to date biggest project. In April we open our first public space exhibition of the monumental sculpture Fundamentalism right next to City Hall. The exhibition happens in connection to ‘Heavenly Days’ see homepage - an inter-religious / Christian festival which is expected to attract over 20,000 religious people from Denmark and abroad.
The exhibition opens on April 26, and ends with the Heavenly Days festival from May 5-8. More about this in the next newsletter which is dedicated to this exhibition.
Fundamentalism / The Children of Abraham
- other exhibitions
On the EU front, the exhibition of Fundamentalism sculpture in front of the EU parliament seems to be called off after Martin Schulz chose to reject the 30 elected EU parliamentarians' request to exhibit the sculpture. But we have not given up completely and Bendt Bendtsen of the conservative People's Party in Denmark is now investigating the possibility of exhibiting a number ‘Pillars of Scriptures’-sculptures inside the EU parliament instead. Such an exhibition would be quite important because it focus on the monotheistic religions similarities. It will be seen by some of Europe's most influential people, and hopefully help to nuance the present religion debate.
Furthermore we are in contact with the Roskilde Festival which is considering exhibiting the sculpture at this year's festival. On August this year a huge “Children of Abraham” exhibition will take place in the Danish town of Varde.
Einar Wegener painting inspires the final scene in the movie "The Danish Girl"
At Gallery Galschiøt we have made a small exhibition of Gerda and Einar Wegener in connection with the movie "The Danish Girl" which just won an Oscar. Great was our surprise when we saw the movie and found out that the painting that hangs in the gallery might have been inspiration for the movies final scene.
The painting was bought at Christie's in New York and is relatively well known on the Internet. It's almost identical with the movies final scene where Gerda Wegener (supposedly) look out over Vejle fjord. However, it is quite a mountainous landscape and any Dane know that there are no mountains in Denmark.
The director later apologized for the mistake with the mountains. We have written to him and asked if the inspiration comes from Einars painting, but we have not received an answer yet :-)