13.08.–14.09.2003
Exhibition | Cabinet

Henrik Olesen
Within the series ”Areas of Action”

Opening13 August 2003, 8 p.m.
Speaker: Raimar Stange, Berlin

This was the first time that the young Danish artist Henrik Olesen (born in 1967, resident in Berlin) has had an exhibition in Austria. He deals specifically with political topics — economic correlations, social justice, day-to-day irritations, the status of homosexuals in society. At the same time he consciously acts within the conceptual sphere of art and art history. His manner of expression can be seen as a merging of the approaches made in minimal art, concept art and pop art. For him this means using inferior materials and making minor adjustments to the exhibition area (for instance in the spatial transmittal of the physical sensation of ”standing in between”) to the use of very direct, agitative means (posters, environments).

For the exhibition Henrik Olesen was planning to continue his research on everyday homophobia i.e. aggression towards homosexuals. He has compiled minimalistic arrangements of books from photocopies of illustrations and texts as well as of materials from the internet and these were presented for people to browse through. The documents were obviously mounted according to argumentative logic but in reality he subjects them to a fundamental study in order to question how information is presented.