Past

Jeuno JE Kim, Lasse Krog Møller: Tingen – From the Greece Gropers Foundation

13 Apr – 2 Jun 2012

The exhibition is a collaboration between the artists Jeuno JE Kim and Lasse Krog Møller. They present ten small collections from the fictional institution The Greece Gropers Foundation, focusing on the institutional structures. The interior of the institution’s lobby is on display in the front exhibition space at Overgaden, where you will find a clay sculpture of a miniature staircase with the inscription ‘Obligatory Optimism’ – the institution’s motto. As a reference to the lobby desk as well as to the artist’s workstation there is a 1:1 scale model of a desk, while a number of neat drawings depict desk landscapes with rubber stamps, ashtrays and coffee rings.

The work The Knight’s Tour (10×10) extends from the lobby to the rear room of the exhibition. On a long plinth, each of the institution’s departments is represented by an architectural model, illuminated by spotlights in the dark exhibition space. In the back room you can study selections from the collection’s many different museum departments, research centres and archives.

Greece Gropers, the founder of the institution, is an anagram of the author Georges Perec. His literary methods, as reflected in the novel Life: A User’s Manual, have structured the artists’ working processes and the conceptual structure of the exhibition, which is based on a sociological approach to everyday phenomena. By imitating a museological presentation form, the exhibition highlights the systems and classifications through which we get to know the world, and questions the institutional distinction between the interesting, the invaluable and the discarded.