Artists: Ursula Reuter Christiansen and Adam Christensen
Exhibition title: Bedtime
Curated by: Rune Finseth and Mai Dengsøe
Venue: Tønder Art Museum, Tønder, Denmark
Date: June 11 – August 7, 2023
Photography: © David Stjernholm all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Tønder Art Museum
The Art Museum in Tønder presents Bedtime, a cross-generational and dialogic exhibition with Ursula Reuter Christiansen and Adam Christensen.
From 10 June onwards, the Art Museum in Tønder (Southern Jutland, Denmark) hosts a joint exhibition by Ursula Reuter Christiansen and Adam Christensen. Through their artistic practices, both artists will explore transformation and dream vision, as well as childhood memories, storytelling and identity.
Ursula Reuter Christiansen’s and Adam Christensen’s works are based on personal experiences, which are embellished with fictional elements. For Reuter Christiansen, these elements draw from the German tales and fairy tales that feed her symbolic paint-ings, and for Christensen, these take shape through the trans-performative heroines that haunt his tactile curtains. Their artistic prac-tice thus evokes the structure of dreams, where remnants from everyday life are allowed to unfold in an independent and unruly way.
Surfaces, scenery, figuration and expressiveness are important tools in both artists’ treatment of the psychological dramas that describe their artistic universe. Through strong metaphors and a clear symbolic language, the emotional directness nevertheless manages to transform itself into the ambiguous.
In Bedtime, the spectator is invited to join their expressive universe of dreamscapes, childhood memories and identity, explored in both older works, and works commissioned for the exhibition at the Art Museum in Tønder.
Through a wide selection of works that spans painting, sculpture, video and textile works, both spatial and mental boundaries are explored. Adam Christensen and Ursula Reuter Christiansen aim to evoke the performativity and afterlife of objects and materials.
The title, Bedtime, refers to the transitional phase between being awake and the abstract and intangible universe of sleep. Here, the ‘bed’ as motif and metaphor, forms the frame-work for the artistic encounter. The theme is a familiar one to both artists, as they have both previously worked with beds, bedrooms and the intimate in various portrayals of child-hood, marriage, sexuality and innocence.
The official opening of the exhibition is 9 June, from 3-5PM. Bedtime will run at the Art Museum in Tønder until 7 January, 2024. As part of the exhibition a book will be launched on the 30 June including interviews, texts, poems and personal photographs.
The exhibition is curated by Rune Finseth and Mai Dengsøe, and serves as an extension and evolution from the exhibition You Might Wanna Stay Over, curated by Mai Dengsoe at Rønnesbækholm, Næstved (11 June 2022 – 7 August 2022).
Ursula Reuter Christiansen (b. 1943, Trier, Germany).
Reuter Christiansen was a student of Professor Joseph Beuys (1921-1986) at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf. Since moving to Denmark in 1969 she has been a key figure in the Danish art scene, while simultaneously playing a pivotal role in the women’s rights movement of the 70’s. Reuter Christiansen was a professor at the Art Academy in Hamburg (HfBK) between 1992-97, and a professor of painting The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts 1997–2006. Along with Henning Christiansen (1932-2008), she represented Denmark at the Venice Biennale in 2001.
Since 1971, Reuter Christiansen has created art drawing from various disciplines, including performance, video, installation, sculpture and painting. In 2002, Ursula Reuter Christiansen received the Thorvaldsen Medal – the highest distinction given by The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts to an artist of the free arts.
Adam Christensen (b. 1979, Aylesbury, England; grew up in Vejen, Denmark)
Christensen attended the European Film College in Ebeltoft and Goldsmiths, London, from which he graduated in 2007. In the early 2000’s, Christensen was a member of the performance troupe, Dunst. He is currently based in London and has exhibited his work in national and international settings. Most recently, his work was on view in the solo exhibition, Küss mich, bevor du gehst (Kiss me before you leave) at Kunstverein Hamburger Bahnhof, Hamburg, 2021, and Overgaden, Copenhagen, 2018. He also participated in the Baltic Triennale 13, ICA in London,Performa 11 at the New Museum in New York, Rønnesbækholm in Næstved.
In 2021, Christensen received the Danish Arts Foundation’s three-year work scholarship and, in 2022, the Aage & Yelva Nimbs Foundation’s honorary scholarship.
