14 February 2013
It was 1961 and Piero Manzoni, at the invitation of the textile manufacturer, patron and collector Aage Damgaard, made his second and last visit to the flat country ofHerning, in the heart of Denmark, and created his celebrated Socle du monde, along with many other works. Out of that legacy, which constitutes the largest collection of Manzoni’s works in the world, was born HEART – Herning Museum of Contemporary Art. A museum, designed in 2009 by Steven Holl, that does not rest on its laurels and continues to churn out fine exhibitions by contemporary artists. The one currently being staged, entitled This Is a Landscape of Desire, is a one-man show by Jesper Just, a talented Danish video artist based in New York who will be representing his country at the next Venice Biennale with a complex pavilion that fuses video installations and architecture. And by a strange twist of fate, an Italian is once again the protagonist of Herning’s own biennial. She is Caroline Corbetta, curator of the exhibition and an impromptu example of the brain drain, who on one of her professional forays to Scandinavia unearthed Just at the beginning of the 2000s and, along with future stars like Nathalie Djurberg and Ragnar Kjartansson, invited him in 2004 to Momentum, the Nordic Biennial. Congratulations to Caroline, then, who after Performa and the Moderna Museet continues to accumulate international experiences at the highest level, alternating them with more experimental projects like the Crepaccio in Milan (she doesn’t officially admit to being responsible, Maurizio Cattelan is supposed to be in charge, but by now it’s an open secret).
Jesper Just, A Voyage in Dwelling, 2008
Jesper Just, A Voyage in Dwelling, 2008
Jesper Just, Sirens of Chrome, 2010
Jesper Just, Sirens of Chrome, 2010
Jesper Just, This Nameless Spectacle, 2011
Jesper Just, This Nameless Spectacle, 2011
Jesper Just, This Nameless Spectacle, 2011
Photo: Iwan Baan
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