Jan S. Hansen at Overgaden

Artist: Jan S. Hansen

Exhibition title: Populus

Venue: Overgaden, Copenhagen, Denmark

Date: June 16 – August 5, 2018

Photography: Anders Sune Berg, copyright of the artist and Overgaden

Note: Exhibition booklet and be found here

In his first major Copenhagen solo exhibition Jan S. Hansen presents a series of new works addressing the individual and collective aspects of the contemporary human condition.

How we are formed and act as individuals in society is a recurrent theme of Jan S. Hansen’s art. Using a broad range of media, he takes an intuitive and anthropological approach to his investigation of our daily negotiation of the need to adapt to new circumstances, at the same time as retaining a connection to some sense of origins.

In the solo exhibition Populus – Latin for ‘people’ – he pursues this trajectory in a series of new works that form a synthetic environment of assemblies, activities and situations. With a simultaneously forward-looking and retrospective view of human civilisation, the works establish absurd connections between the mundane and spiritual dimensions of existence.

In an exhibition landscape where elements of the interior and exterior merge in the galleries at Overgaden, we encounter a mannequin on stilts about to go through a wall. Further on in the exhibition a domestic interior with a sofa, coffee table, microwave oven and cutlery is staged so these familiar, everyday objects form surreal, dreamlike scenarios. Another mannequin sits in the sofa holding a jug pouring a white foam mass, and on the floor there are bowls containing martens. Another marten sits ready to be cooked in the microwave. Elsewhere in the exhibition we see a vibrating metal cube in a garden shed, and a suitcase of broken mirrors and kaleidoscopic reflections. A series of monochrome paintings in horizontal format reinforce the experience of unfamiliar inner and outer landscapes.

At the intersection of nature, culture and technology, Jan S. Hansen’s exhibition probes social relations and constructs, which he juxtaposes with the universal human needs, longings and behavioural patterns that drive our continuous endeavours and movement towards a shared future.

Jan S. Hansen (b. 1980) graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2010. He was part of the artist-run exhibition space IMO until 2014, and has participated in solo and group exhibitions in both Denmark and abroad at Huset for Kunst og Design, Holstebro; Galleri Jacob Bjørn, Aarhus; Kunsthal 44Møen, Askeby; IMO, Copenhagen; On Stellar Rays, New York, and Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen. His most recent exhibition was at Marie Kirkegaard Gallery in Copenhagen.