Copenhagen's Quadrennial

Modeled after the big biannuals, but not as big, the Copenhagen Quadrennial is the city's first attempt at an international art festival. It turns out there was a competition of ideas for a city art festival and two young women won the contest with a proposal for this years festival called U-Turn. Frankly, I have seen better art at many graduate school thesis shows, but there were some gems... and more importantly some really great ideas for exhibition venues and programming albeit a little ill-communicated. Just for an example, the above image is what I found when I navigated my way through the city in order to go to the "U-Turn Information Center." I'm being harsh here, but to give credit, they really did tackle quite a big project in an ambitious manner.



I went to the opening night of the biggest venue--an unused warehouse-ish building at the original Carlsberg Beer Brewery complex. They set up several of the big spaces with a combination of artists work, and sited other installations in these little storage or office type rooms off to the side. They really effectively occupied the building. My favorite piece of the night was a performance reminiscent of a Josheph Beuys action, but maybe if Beuys had slept in late that day and was feeling a bit cheeky. Title: Wet Paint Handshakes. There was a big bucket of water for washing the paint off after a handshake, and a stack of cloth towels for drying. It was quite fun to watch new people enter the exhibition and size up this bald man in a suit standing in front of them with his hand stuck out to shake. The brave and fun ones got right into it, others acted like they didn't really see him, and there were those, that after watching for five minutes or so decided to go out, re-enter the exhibit and shake the man's hand as if they were just getting there for the first time. Funny, I was one of five or six people that were walking in to the show, just as the artist was arriving himself. We were a bit too early to really be a part of the social experiment.