Ten Danish art museums have joined forces to orchestrate a nationwide celebration of the artist Ingvar Cronhammar on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Presenting exhibitions of Cronhammar’s best-known work, supplemented by all-new pieces, ten Danish art museums showcase key moments in the sculptor’s monumental – in every sense of the work – body of work. The celebratory exhibitions coincide with the publication of a major book which looks back on Cronhammar’s artistic endeavours and provide an overview of the highlights.

The sculptor Ingvar Cronhammar (b. 1947 in Hässleholm, Sweden) might quite accurately be described as a stand-alone chapter within recent Danish art. In terns of materials, forcefulness, and – very importantly – scale, his distinctive works certainly stand out from the crowd. Inescapably so. Throughout the last decades, he has left his idiosyncratic, uncompromising mark on Danish landscapes and public spaces with striking artistic works and interventions. His sculptures and architectural installations have also provoked wonder, outrage, and enthusiasm at numerous museums and exhibition venues in Denmark and abroad.

From incendiary agitation...Ingvar Cronhammar studied at the Århus Academy of Fine Arts from 1968 to 1971. During his early years as an artist, he was associated with the artists’ groups ZYGO and Sonde. The works from the early period have an overt satirical objective, offering a critique of contemporary society. The humour is direct and forceful, and the choice of materials is both startling and original. Wood, leather, bones, teeth, skin, and water are used in complex and demanding constructions that coalesce to form protests against the mediocrity and narrow-mindedness of the bourgeois. One example is the singing pigs’ heads in the work The Pigs are Coming; the Pigs are Here; They’re Singing, the Pigs (1976).

... to monumental art - Mediocrity is also under fire in the pieces created from the late eighties up until the present day, albeit in very different ways. In the work that marked his final breakthrough, The Gate (1988), Cronhammar introduces a unique vein of monumentality that would also permeate his subsequent works – as is evident in e.g. Juggernaut (1991, Danmarks Lærerhøjskole, Emdrup), Abyss (1999, Handels- og Ingeniørhøjskolen in Birk near Herning) and not least Elia (2001, Birk Center Park, Herning). Here you find huge machine bodies and unrelentingly aesthetic installations possessed of a refreshing lack of restraint in terms of both scale and elegance. Even the smaller sculptures have an industrial, persistently perfect finish that imbues them with a science-fiction-like, almost magical quality.

Cronhammar’s works occupy the realm between the archaic and the futuristic, between the temple and the power plant. They seem alien, not made by human beings. Even so, they speak to us as human beings despite their booming silence. Their awe-inspiring, even fearsome appearance reminds us that there are forces bigger than ourselves in the world. They perform an exorcism which rips us out of our normal world, our usual way of seeing thing, confronting us instead with the sublime and the fantastic, but also with the inexorable: Death.

Many museums collaborate - Ingvar Cronhammar celebrates his 60th birthday on 17 December. The event is celebrated nationwide by ten museums, brought together by a shared desire to shed light on one of Denmark’s pre-eminent sculptors and his remarkable life’s work. The participating museums exhibit works from their own collections as well as a number of all-new works never before displayed.

The Book - Cronhammar. På danske kunstmuseer (Danish only), 136 pages, lavishly illustrated.
Main essay by Carsten Thau, professor at the Royal Academy of Fine Art’s School of Architecture in Copenhagen. Poem by Peter Laugesen. Contributions from Christine Buhl Andersen (Kunstmuseet Køge Skitsesamling), Anne Christiansen (Fyns Kunstmuseum), Nina Hobolth (Nordjyllands Kunstmuseum), Ove Mogensen (Kunstmuseet i Tønder), Lars Kærulf Møller (Bornholms Kunstmuseum), Karsten Ohrt (Statens Museum for Kunst), Claus Hagedorn Olsen (Horsens Kunstmuseum), Holger Reenberg (Herning Kunstmuseum), Jane Sandberg (Trapholt), Jens Erik Sørensen (ARoS), and Britta Tøndborg (Statens Museum for Kunst). Editors: Carsten Thau and Statens Museum for Kunst. Price: DKK 139. The book is available at all participating museums. ISBN: 978 87 92023 12 4. The book was co-funded by the Ny Carlsberg Foundation.

Participating museums and exhibition periods

ARoS
23 November – 10 February
Bornholms Kunstmuseum
16 December – 24 March
Fyns Kunstmuseum
18 December – 3 August
Herning Kunstmuseum
18 December – 12 May
Horsens Kunstmuseum
15 December – 6 January
Kunstmuseet i Tønder
8 December – 24 February
Kunstmuseet Køge Skitsesamling
15 December – 24 February
Nordjyllands Kunstmuseum
18 December – 24 February
Statens Museum for Kunst
15 December – 27 April
Trapholt
12 December – 24 February