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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
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Danske Bank

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Press

Free and Colourful Sex at Kunsten

Nov 2nd 2022, 9:10am

Now nearing the age of 90 and still going strong, Dorothy Iannone has dedicated herself to a powerful, epic world of images for six decades. Based on her own life and a myriad of historical references, she extols free love and ecstasy, and the ardent and spiritual union of lovers.

Soon, you will have the opportunity to visit a richly colourful universe, in which sexual liberation reigns supreme.

 

In November, Kunsten in Aalborg will open a solo show devoted to the legendary Dorothy Iannone (b. 1933). Freedom, sexual liberation, ecstatic intercourse with another person and full-blooded libido are the key themes of Dorothy Iannone’s work. Her works are rooted in historical depictions of amorous relationships, sex, ecstasy, freedom and existence across time, cultures and religions.

 

This exhibition speaks not only to our senses and emotions, but to our intellect too.

 

Because, while Iannone’s works are often based directly on her own life and experiences, they also draw on a myriad of historical and literary references, the personal and the mythological elements freely interwoven.

 

Her autobiographical representations feature countless references to antiquity, Greek vases, Egyptian art, Roman Pompeian murals, the Kama Sutra, tantra, Icelandic sagas, Christianity, Buddhism, world literature and film history.

 

Leave your troubles behind

Earlier this year, the exhibition was shown at Louisiana in Humlebæk, where it garnered excellent reviews. All the more reason to look forward to Iannone’s visit to Aalborg.

 

“We are overjoyed that we can now present the exhibition in the New Gallery – a setting that will lend a new aspect to the experience. I’m also delighted about the timing. Given the state of the world at the moment, we need art and culture to mirror us and provide us with positive experiences. We need a worry-free zone in the midst of all the darkness. Dorothy Iannone provides us with a life-affirming, optimistic encounter with what has always been the most important aspect of life: love,” says Lasse Andersson, Director of Kunsten.  

 

Many of her works come over as ‘graphic novels’, in which, with an uninhibited combination of hand-written text and images, she tells stories with a humorous use of linguistic and pictorial details.

 

An important work in the exhibition is A Cookbook (1969). Amongst the neatly written recipes, it features existential considerations and thoughts about this and that. In the middle of a mayonnaise recipe, for example, she dishes up the following thought: “Well, God could be a woman. Sorry”. The book is classic Iannone – rich in details, sensuality and gender politics, served salty, tart, bitter, and with umami and seductive sweetness, as she grapples to stick to the classic format of a recipe book.

 

Dorothy Iannone. Foto: Frédéric Paul, 2019

 

Tape over genitals

Two of Iannone’s works are the stories, The Story of Bern (Or) Showing Colors (1970) and The Icelandic Saga (1978, 1983, 1986). The first work is about censorship and artistic self-censorship in the context of an exhibition at Kunsthalle Bern in 1969, when both artist colleagues and the exhibition’s curator, the legendary Harald Szeemann, joined in the censorship of Iannone’s works by sticking tape over the genitals depicted in her drawings. Directly and indirectly, censorship has been a recurring phenomenon for the artist, and she actively fought against it way back in 1961, when her lawsuit against the US government led to the abolition of the censorship of the works of the author Henry Miller.

 

Lover of a Danish clergyman

The Icelandic Saga is a love story about the stormy affair between Dorothy Iannone and the Swiss artist Dieter Roth, whom she met on a trip to Iceland in 1967. Meeting Roth changed her life, and the couple were together for the next seven years. Featuring in many of Iannone’s works, Roth was her muse.

 

Later partners played the same role. For example, in other works, we encounter the Danish clergyman Erik Bock (b. 1941), pastor of Holy Cross Church in the Nørrebro district of Copenhagen for 40 years.

 

Dorothy Iannone was born in 1933 in Boston, USA, but since 1967 has been based in Europe. She lives and works in Berlin. Louisiana owns two of her graphic works. Her works also feature on the collections of such museums as the Pompidou Centre, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Berlinische Galerie and Tate Modern.

 

Dorothy Iannone opens at Kunsten on 25 November 2022 and runs until 5 March 2023.

 

Download press photos here.

Coverfoto © Dorothy Iannone