Autumn 2023 program

Established as an artists’ space in 1986, O—Overgaden continues to be one of the few large-scale art institutions in Denmark with a focus on emerging artists, local and international.

This fall, O mounts the first major institutional shows in Denmark by performance artist Cassie Augusta Jørgensen, animation polyglot Anna Sofie Mathiasen, and figurative painter Anna Rettl. Each show is accompanied by a new edition in O’s publication series, released in print and online. Additionally, O’s associate research fellow Cally Spooner converts her series of performative talks at O into a work-in-progress, collaborative exhibition titled Duration, riffing on the eponymous text closing her essay series in Mousse Magazine. Meanwhile, sculptor Rasmus Myrup presents Precoming—a prelude to his grand-scale commission at GIBCA  (Gothenburg International Biennial for Contemporary Art) this fall.

In parallel, O continues to host AYE-AYE, an independent project space by Nina Beier and Simon Dybbroe Møller situated in the institution’s former directorial office. Previous displays include AYE-AYE #1 Geology; #2 Mortality; #3 Periodicity; #4 Collectivity; #5 Authority; #6 Buoyancy; #7 Security; #8 Creativity, while the upcoming shows opening this fall are AYE-AYE #9 Autonomy and AYE-AYE #10 Assembly.

Finally, O expands its program in O-Rooom, a space supporting communal culture, debate, live acts, and all impromptu informalities in between. For one year from this fall, O-Rooom houses the parasite publishing-and-exhibiting platform Adagio for Things, founded by Wilfred Wagner to showcase new books-as-artworks through eight exhibitions, featuring artists including Miriam Kongstad, Henning Lundkvist, and Vibe Overgaard.

Anna Rettl: Laocoön Loop
August 26–October 29, 2023
Rooted in art history—think human figures adorned in attire indicating social rank and status—Anna Rettl’s (Austria/Denmark, 1992) grand watercolor paintings enlarge existing characters while stripping their bodies bare. Removing all markers, as the naked truth of an era, her canvases are like anatomical studies of the body inherent to a certain time and ideology. For O, Rettl produces a new series referencing early 20th-century modernist motifs created during the rise of fascism in central Europe. Lean, distorted bodies in states of agitation, her figures stretch to meet a new industrial, capitalist, and war-ridden world, presented as a cabinet of corpses crawling across the exhibition spaces.

Cally Spooner: Duration
August 26–October 29, 2023
As associate research fellow at O since 2021, Cally Spooner (UK/Italy, 1983) has developed a long-term itinerant project—moonlighting as book, philosophy study, rehearsal, and opera—asking how “performance” has come to govern the realm of our social bonds and how such governance might be resisted by adopting alternative models of time. The final in a series of public work-in-progress events, Duration explores the potentials of durational collaborations. Spooner’s existing work Maggie’s Solo, a room-sized projection of a dance piece, serves as a study tool and a backdrop against which new repertoire and conversations develop. Dancer Maggie Segale evolves Maggie’s Solo into a new choreography; Will Holder closes his ongoing talk series in O—Overgaden’s O-Rooom; and Spooner workshops an immersive soundtrack with local children.

Rasmus Myrup: Precoming
August 26–October 29, 2023
Renegade-naturalist mythmaker, Rasmus Myrup’s (Denmark, 1991) drawing and sculpture practice calls forth the queer in the quotidian—from folklore to popular science. In his presentation at O, Precoming, Myrup mines the underdetermined messiness of language for its irrational potential, glitches, and gaps. Through homonyms, wordplay, and insistently subversive double entendres, words are connected with unexpected objects, spanning faux runestones, a thirst trap painting, pepper grinders, and a pine chandelier. The result is a sticky visual wilderness of crisscrossing cultural codes forming a prelude to his major installation at this year’s GIBCA.

Cassie Augusta Jørgensen: Slit Your Click
November 25, 2023–January 28, 2024
With a background in ballet, choreography, and club performance, Cassie Augusta Jørgensen’s (Denmark/Germany, 1991) recent work focuses on pop culture’s stereotypical (mis)conceptions of the trans woman—from The Danish Girl to Psycho—in a simultaneously seductive, absurd, and hyper-real societal critique. For her first large-scale solo exhibition, Jørgensen creates a sonic and filmic space based on the infamous museum scene in Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill and its flirting chase through The Met. Built around a grand screen wall, the show doubles and triples an exhilarating twirl of live and screened performances, real and performed personae.

Anna Sofie Mathiasen: Folly
November 25, 2023–January 28, 2024
With her stop-motion animation quoting, among other things, Danish children’s TV programs of the 70s and 80s (most notably the leftist ladybug-girl Cirkeline), Anna Sofie Mathiasen (Denmark/Norway, 1995) employs a naïve visual language to unmask societal mores in a sharp and witty détournement. For her first institutional show in her native Denmark, Mathiasen toys with “the garden” as a place of healing; in particular its notorious odd place: the folly, merging references to popular TV gardening programs, the folly her grandfather built for a famous Danish gallerist, the late Derek Jarman’s garden in Kent, and her own experiences with mental illness and the invasive Jerusalem artichoke.

Support: O’s main funder is the Danish Arts Foundation. Further generous supporters include Aage and Johanne Louis-Hansen’s Foundation, the Augustinus Foundation, Beckett-Fonden, and the A.P. Moller Foundation.