Kunsten Museum of Modern Art Aalborg

Kong Christians Allé 50
9000 Aalborg
Denmark

Phone: +45 99 82 41 00
kunsten@kunsten.dk
CVR: 47 21 82 68
faktura@kunstenfaktura.dk

 

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Events

Michael Kvium – Junction

Feb 6th 2025 to Apr 21st 2025

Looking Inward: Michael Kvium’s Mastery of Self-Reflection

To “look inward” is the ability to reflect on oneself and acknowledge personal, not-so-flattering traits. Danish visual artist Michael Kvium masters this exercise to perfection.
 
In his 1991 series Akademi, consisting of 60 oil paintings and accompanying sketchbooks, Kvium takes introspection to its most literal extreme—deep inside the human body. What happens to our perception of the body when its inner organs are brought to life?
 
With Kvium, the result is dark and grim. But upon closer inspection, he creates new forms of existence: visceral lifeforms and soft, mollusk-like lumps of flesh, infused with Kvium’s signature humor and a surprising care for these peculiar organisms.

 

The Unseen, the Grotesque, the Surreal

In the 1980s, Michael Kvium visited the Panum Institute, studying the body’s internal organs—brains, kidneys, intestines, and lungs—preserved in watery formaldehyde solutions. These studies became central to his later work, exploring the body, the unseen, the grotesque, and the surreal. The exhibition includes human specimens as evidence of these studies.
 
When Kvium painted Akademi in 1991, intestines and internal organs were generally perceived as repulsive, filled with dangerous bacteria. Today, we see things differently. The gut is now considered the key to mental well-being, and it is beneficial for newborns to be “seeded” with bacteria from their mother’s birth canal. We consume “the professor’s green porridge” in pursuit of the perfect microbiome, and we now understand that the body contains more bacterial cells than human cells.
 
Thus, a new junction emerges—a point within our inner darkness where the physical and mental connect, generating new energy. We see this in Kvium’s early 1990s paintings and sketches, and we experience it today when we dare to look inward and explore our inner selves. Beauty and ugliness transform over time—from cradle to grave. It’s so simple.

 

Image above: Michael Kvium, Knudepunkt (Junction) (1993) © Michael Kvium / VISDA

About Michael Kvium

Michael Kvium began his artistic career as an illustrator for Horsens Folkeblad, where he worked for six years. From 1979 to 1985, he studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. It was also during the 1980s that he experienced his artistic breakthrough and has since worked with a striking form of figurative realism.

 

Michael Kvium has created countless paintings and exhibited at museums and galleries both nationally and internationally. With a wide range of artistic expressions—including drawing, printmaking, video, performance, and painting—Kvium has, over the years, depicted the absurdity of life and the darker sides of human existence.

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