Real Heart at Gauli Zitter

Artists: Judith Kakon, Morten Knudsen, Hanne Darboven

Exhibition title: Real Heart

Venue: Gauli Zitter, Brussels, Belgium

Date: January 19 – March 2, 2024

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Gauli Zitter, Brussels

They had to joke not to crash under the load of sobs. They had feelings to hurt. A laugh hit, hit, hit, until tender.

– Ab Ha

Real Heart deals with coping, relief, and how we are not shockproof: Kakon’s falsely industrial trays for the transport of flowers, spotlit containers for things that’d be pretty were they not overly typical and gone anyway; Knudsen’s paintings of abstract impressionistic flavor, hints of grief over past life struggles; Darboven’s scribbles, which Bruce Hainley considered a working-through traumatic events. (Her coffee magnate father fueled the Nazis with caffeine during WWII, leaving his daughter with failed redemption). These works look brighter than their core, a real heart evoking solace, tasting agrodolce to say the least.

JUDITH KAKON (*1988, CH), currently lives and works in Basel. She received her Master in Fine Arts from Bard MFA, New York (2017) and her Bachelor degree from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem (2013). Her work encompasses sculpture, installation, image-making as well as the use of text sources, frequently borrowed from transnational English. The exhibition as medium plays an intrinsic role in her way of working, occasionally this also results in curatorial and collaborative work. Recent shows were hosted by venues such as La criée, centre d’art contemporain, Rennes (2023), Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen (2021), Kunsthalle Basel (2020), Coalmine, Winterthur (2020), Ventilator, Tel Aviv (2019), SALTS, Birsfelden (2019), Anorak at the project space of Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart (2018), Riverside Space, Worblaufen (2018) Stiftung Alexander Bürkle, Freiburg (2017), Kunsthaus Langenthal (2017), Studioli, Rome (2016), Taylor Macklin, Zurich (2015), Kunsthaus Glarus (2015).

MORTEN KNUDSEN (*1986, DK) lives and works in Copenhagen. He studied painting at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts Copenhagen, and Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg, in the class of Jutta Köether. He recently exhibited at Cucina Copenhagen, Copenhagen (2023), Simo Bacar, Lisbon (2022), Golsa, Oslo (2022), The House for Art and Design, Holstebro (2022), The National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen (2020), Christian Andersen Gallery, Copenhagen (2020). In 2018 he received the Niels Wessel Bagges honorary scholarship, and The 15th June Foundation’s Honorary Award.

HANNE DARBOVEN (1941-2009, DE) was a conceptual artist, best known for her large-scale installations consisting of handwritten tables of numbers. She moved to New York in 1966 for a few years before spending the rest of her life in semi-isolation on a property in Hamburg. Her work is part of major public collections such as those of the Centre Georges Pompidou Paris, Dia:Beacon New York, Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin, SMAK Ghent, and MMK Frankfurt.