Mikkel Carl at Kunsthal NORD

Artist: Mikkel Carl

Exhibition title: We Are All Workers

Venue: Kunsthal NORD, Alborg, Denmark

Date: May 9 – June 21, 2015

Photography: Niels Fabaek, images courtesy of the artist and Kunsthal NORD

We have the great pleasure of welcoming you to Mikkel Carl’s first institutional solo show We Are All Workers. It’s a site-sensitive exhibition aimed directly at Nordkraft and Kunsthal NORD’s post-industrial architecture: existing doorways are blinded, large holes are broken through the newly built partition walls and the administration and storage area is expanded.

With these radical interventions Mikkel Carl is trying to give the audience the sense that nothing is what it used to be; suddenly they have gained access to new spaces – and then again. He is forcing us to experience the art institution in new ways visually, physically and mentally.

So, beside the apparent architectural transformations, the exhibition consist further of conceptual, individual pieces commenting on the notions of ‘work’ within and beyond the art institution: Large blobs of melted aluminium spread around on the stairs, a power drill stuck in the wall rotating around itself, one twisted EUR pallet, a spectacular wall of 322 mirrors and a local reinterpretation of the American artist Walter de Maria’s old text piece “Rome Eats Shit”.

Mikkel Carl is inspired by art theoretical and culture critical movements such as the historical avant- garde, the ‘60s neo-avant-garde, postmodern appropriation art and the´90s relational aesthetics, all of which tried to challenge the classical art institution and the existing concept of art.

The exhibition title WE ARE ALL WORKERS is written with large black letters on the facade of the enormous Kedelhallen in Nordkraft. Mikkel Carl has snatched the well known slogan from the Levi’s latest advertising campaign:

“By positioning the statement We Are All Workers in the middle of Nordkraft, I aim at the transformation from an industrial society to an information- and education culture that Aalborg is undergoing these years, and which this 30,000 m2 cultural centre is itself a significant expression of”.

Mikkel Carl (1979) graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2009. Since then he has had solo exhibitions at Last Resort in Copenhagen and Annaellegallery in Stockholm and he has participated in numbers of group exhibitions in Denmark and abroad. He has also received a number of travel and working grants and was in 2012 awarded by the National Arts Council for his exhibition ‘New Paintings Caught’ in the Headlights of Parking Cars in Ringsted Gallery. Mikkel Carl lives and works in Sorø.

The exhibition is supported by The Danish Arts Foundation, Det Obelske Familiefond and Spar Nord Fonden.