Erik A. Frandsen Retrospective

ARoS has for many years cherished a desire to mount a major retrospective exhibition of the work of the Danish artist Erik A. Frandsen (b. 1957). This exhibition in ARoS has been conceived as a total installation, staging and working through the overall entire in close cooperation with the artist. With an innovative curatorial approach, ARoS seeks to open up for the many complex meanings that are embedded in Erik A. Frandsen’s many-facetted work from 1982-2008.

ARoS has followed this artist over the years and with its collection of 32 paintings, sculptures, videos and neon installations in addition to more than 250 graphics has acquired many of his most important works. For this reason, too, it has now increasingly become imperative that the artist’s complete oeuvre should be put on show in one large exhibition.

The exhibition will be staged in the form of an urban milieu consisting of streets and two-storey buildings. This technique provides a space for the meeting between the private and public spheres, something that is a distinct motif in Erik A. Frandsen’s art. With this is reflected the artist’s ambiguous range of motifs, in which the pleasant reveals the unpleasant, the intimate is fused with the distanced, and where everyday scenes portray psychological dramas. The contrasts in Erik A. Frandsen will be put in play, and the public will be obliged to move physically along the narrow neon alleyways, to peep into private and intimate spheres, to be mirrored in the public squares, to enjoy the view from the constructed vantage points and to meet themselves in the eternally fading vanitas motifs.

This exhibition is curated by the director of the museum, Jens Erik Sørensen, and Lise Mortensen.

Erik A. Frandsen
Retrospective exhibition of works from 1982-2008
Kurator: Jens Erik Sorensen