Afgang / Degree Show 2023: Loops
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Participating Artists:
Kristina Fernos, Frederik Heidemann, Laura Hjort Jensen, Tobias Just, Gustav Hooge Poulsen, Sally Messell-Dalgaard, Mikkel Holm Torp
Guest Curator:
Nanna Balslev Strøjer
Afgang is the annual graduation exhibition for the graduates of the Jutland Art Academy. The exhibition celebrates and showcases artworks by seven new talents from The Jutland Art Academy, and is at once an insight into the five-year educational process and a final work that points into their future careers as professional visual artists.
“History repeats itself” is a common phrase. Saddened we notice it when another war flares up; exhilarated we feel it inside us, as our children take their first steps. An annual recurring event like a graduation exhibition provides an opportunity to reflect on the ways in which history repeats itself and how these repetitions manifest themselves in our lives.
Loops marks the transition of seven young talents from students to professional artists. It inscribes itself in history as an event that at once points back to the graduation exhibitions of the past and their graduates, to tradition, to routine, and to ritual. At the same time, this event also points to new generations, to future projects that can occur in all formats and across geographies, to the unexplored and the untested.
A loop expresses just such a movement. Unlike the endless circle, a loop is defined by the fact that it bends and crosses itself, passing through its own starting point. In addition to the inherent repetition of the graduation exhibition as a format, Loops invites its visitors to reflect on the repetition, or loop as a movement. The curator seeks to emphasize this further by referring to twists and turns of meaning of the exhibition. These can manifest themselves both in what she refers to as the large and abstract, the social, political and cultural arenas, as well as smaller, more concrete scenes, and each artist’s entanglement with form and material.
The exhibition is generously supported by:
Danish Arts Foundation
Aarhus Municipality
Den Hielmstierne-Rosencroneske Stiftelse
15. Juni Foundation
Aarhus Art Prize is supported by Salling Fondene.
