About
The artist group A Kassen, who have collaborated since 2004, is a leading group in a new wave of young Scandinavian sculptors who work within, whilst developing and reinventing, a conceptual and avant-garde tradition. Since the mid-2000s, their work has evolved in extraordinary ways, using and exploiting a vast range of materials and ideas in a rich and imaginative way.
Often taking a conceptual approach to site-specific and performative installations, photographs and sculptures, directly incorporating materials and elements of a given place in various ways. Thus, as a result, many of their works address the idea and significance of given places and objects.
Famous examples of A Kassen’s, often humorous, conceptual take on art can be found in the pieces Stone (Brück, Germany, 2011) and Handles (Sorø Kunstmuseum, Sorø, Denmark, 2016). Stone consisted of the residents of Brück photographed behind, thus invisible, a large stone by the entrance of the town while Handles came about by mounting door handles (borrowed from the local area) on the walls of the exhibition space. Mere chance (or?...) also plays a part in A Kassen’s oeuvre, like in the piece Ponds (CC – Copenhagen Contemporary, 2017). Adam Carr writes in A Kassen. Dimensions Variable (2022):
Often, A Kassen works in such a way that a highly staged event meets a provisional accident – where artistic statement collides with the curatorial. Ponds (2017) hones in on the world’s fodder for curators over the floor plan. Coffee is spilled on a printed floor plan of an exhibition site, and in the actual space itself, the coffee spill is made to mimic the original spill in the same location, position, and shape. Yet, the spill is made much larger, taking on a gargantuan proportion. The work might recall the sheer amount of cups of coffee used to transform the once small spill into a huge pond, turning the accidental into the deliberate and working between and in between two speeds, slow and fast.
A Kassen, who first met at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, comprises Christian Bretton-Meyer (b. 1976), Morten Steen Hebsgaard (b. 1977), Søren Petersen (b. 1977) and Tommy Petersen (b. 1975). The members (educated at The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, Denmark; ABDK/Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Munich, Germany and Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main, Germany) live and work in Copenhagen and Berlin.
Over the last two decades the group has exhibited (in group exhibitions as well as solo shows) all over the world, from Istanbul to São Paulo. One of their earliest group exhibitions was the Luleå Summer Biennale in Sweden (2005) and the most recent solo exhibitions (Bronze Pour and Farola, 2022 were shown in Galerie Mitterand, Paris and Gallery Maisterravalbuena, Madrid. Recent residencies include ISCP, New York (2012), Skaftfell, Seyðisfjörður, Iceland (2013) and CCA Andratx, Mallorca (2014).
A Kassen’s oeuvre is represented in the collections of, amongst others, CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Madrid; Kunsten Aalborg, Denmark and Malmö Konstmuseum, Sweden. Recent permanent installations include Bronze Pour (Embassy of Denmark, New Delhi, India) and Shaped by Nature (Seoul, South Korea), both 2021, as well as Imorgon & Nu (Karlstad, Sweden) 2022.
CFHILL, in collaboration with Galleri Nicolai Wallner, Copenhagen, are proud to present A Kassen’s debut solo exhibition in Sweden. We, first of all, wish to extend our warm thanks to A Kassen for deciding to exhibit with us. We, also, wish to thank Galleri Nicolai Wallner for exemplary collaboration on this exhibition project.
