Artist: Adam Christensen
Exhibition title: Shitty Heartbreaker
Curated by: James Day
Venue: Overgaden, Copenhagen, Denmark
Date: August 25 – October 31, 2018
Photography: Anders Sune Berg, copyright of the artist and Overgaden
Note: Exhibition plan can be found here
Shitty Heartbreaker is Danish-British artist Adam Christensen’s first solo exhibition at a Danish art insti-tution: a collection of performances, readings, installations and videos.
Adam Christensen’s primary media are video and performance, but texts, installations, textile works and music also form part of his wide-ranging practice. Christensen’s works are based on the emotional dramas of everyday life as they play out in his immediate surroundings, in recent experiences the he has had, and among the people he is in contact with or who catch his attention. He uses biographical elements seasoned with theatricality, so the borders between everyday life and fiction become blurred and are sometimes erased. Christensen works with simple, minimalist forms. In his readings and song performances he often uses simple props, like a harmonica, a costume made for the occasion, or a newly written text.
At Overgaden he has created a total installation including sound, textiles, video and text. The point of departure for the exhibition is his film project in progress Eyes of Blood – an erotic thriller made in collaboration with Sidsel Christensen – and it is based on a series of video fragments and production footage from the film. Christensen has previously worked with film screenings as a method to conduct group explorations of spaces and classical figures like the femme fatale.
Christensen uses the galleries at Overgaden to explore what happens when the moods and narratives of personal experience are transferred to the art space. The works unfold a narrative of heartbreak, desire, memory and identi-ty, underpinned by elements like textile works with characters relating to the universe of the film. At the heart of the exhibition is a stage, where during the exhibition Christensen will interact with, develop, and edit the overriding narrative through a series of performances and readings. These sessions will subsequently be absorbed into the exhibition in the form of soundtracks and other documentation, adding new, grungier melancholic layers to a story in a process of continuous development.
The exhibition is curated by art historian James Day.
Adam Christensen (b. 1979, UK) graduated from Goldsmiths, University of London in 2007. His latest solo exhibi-tions include Baltic Triennial (the Baltics), OuterSpace (Milan, IT), OUTPOST Gallery (Norwich, UK) Queen Adelaide (London, UK) and Maison Maca (Athens, GR). In addition, he is a member of the music project Ectopia, and has also made performances and participated in a wide range of group exhibitions at EKKM (Tallinn, EST), LimaZulu (London, UK), Centre for Contemporary Art Futura (Prague, CZ), Elain, MGK, (Basle, CH), ICA (London, UK), Glue Factory (Glasgow, UK), Performa 11, New Museum (NYC, US), David Roberts Art Foundation (Southard Reid, London, UK), Institute of Contemporary Arts, and Hollybush Gardens (both London, UK). His band Ectopia was also Wysing Arts Centre’s band-in-residence in 2016.
