Museum Magasin 3
Per Kirkeby
Per Kirkeby is best known for his large painterly constructions, often based on the Scandinavian landscape, as well as for his monumental brick sculptures. Kirkeby has an existential perspective and a keen ability to capture the untamed forces of nature and life. He first studied geology at the University of Copenhagen before becoming involved in the radical Den Eksperimenterende Kunstskole in Copenhagen and in the Fluxus group. Other influences include 1960s artistic movements such as pop art, performance and minimalism. Kirkeby also worked with film and in his Masonite paintings from the period he mixes pop culture references with visuals taken from the world of advertising. His international breakthrough came in the 1980s with his large, abstract, expressively colorful paintings and sculptures in bronze and brick. Several monumental brick sculptures by Per Kirkeby are on view in Sweden, including Moderna Museet in Stockholm and Wanås sculpture park.
Per Kirkeby was born in Copenhagen in 1938. His work has been widely exhibited and is included in the collections of some of the most important institutions of modern art such as the Modern Museum of Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and Centre Pompidou, Paris. His most recent solo exhibitions have been held at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Tate Modern, London and Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf. Kirkeby has also published novels, a collection of poetry, essays on art and architecture and the work of other artists. A member of the Danish Academy since 1982 he became an honorary member of the British Royal Academy of Arts along with fellow artist Ai Weiwei in 2011. Magasin 3 presented a solo exhibition of Per Kirkeby in 1999.
Tal R
Tal R is Denmark’s currently most prominent painter, and he has won much critical acclaim internationally. After graduating from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2000 he won the prestigious Carnegie Art Award for painters in 2002. Tal R is best known for his colorful, naïve and partially abstract large-scale paintings; however, he also works in other media such as sculpture, drawing, installations, video and textiles. Most recently he has been involved in developing the experimental clothing line MoonSpoon Saloon. Tal R’s motifs are inspired by advertising, horror films, children’s drawings, newspapers and encounters with other people. In his paintings he likes to play with perspective, framing, surface and shape. He implements his own kind of cubism, as he puts it.
Tal R was born in 1967 in Israel but spent most of his childhood in Copenhagen where he still lives today. He holds a guest professorship at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, which he often “exchanges” with colleagues at other art academies. His work has been presented in numerous solo exhibitions at institutions such as Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk and Der Kunstverein in Hamburg. Tal R has previously been presented at Magasin 3 in a solo exhibition Old Confused (2009) and in Thrice upon a time (2010).
Cosima von Bonin
Cosima von Bonin is one of the most influential and productive artists in Germany today. Her work encompasses sculpture, photography, textile “paintings”, installations, film, video and performance, making it difficult to place within a specific genre. Often large in scale, her installations include all of the above media, and sometimes also feature the work of fellow artists, or artists with whom she feels a certain kinship. She has an on-going collaboration with the DJ Moritz von Oswald and also runs a record company with Justus Köhnke.
Her work is free-flowing, a reaction to impressions from popular culture, folk art, fashion, hip-hop, techno and personal experiences. Von Bonin creates worlds governed by their own social order—exploring notions of free play and indoctrination, structure and improvisation, gender and identity—in pieces that are often absurd and humorous.
Cosima von Bonin was born in Mombasa, Kenya in 1962 and currently lives and works in Cologne. She has had solo exhibitions at Tate Liverpool, Documenta 12 in Kassel, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Witte de With in Rotterdam and Museum Ludwig in Cologne. Her work has previously been presented at Magasin 3 including the exhibitions Freeport (2001), for which she created the work Item, To be continued… (2007) and BETWIXT (2008). The newly-acquired piece Hermit Crab in Fake Royère is now shown at Magasin 3 for the first time.
