Big Art: Large-scale contemporary art in architecture created by Bjarke Ingels Group

About

‘Our creative collaborations with artists from all over the world have been some of the most meaningful moments in our architectural adventures, and we are very pleased to see them celebrated in this exhibition, where everyone can experience the artists’ installations at the scale they were intended to be in.’ – Bjarke Ingels

Kunsthal Charlottenborg kicks off the fall season with their most comprehensive exhibition of large-scale contemporary art to date: Big Art. Art works by some of the most acclaimed artists in the world including Ai Weiwei, Douglas Coupland, Jeppe Hein, Julie Edel Hardenberg, SUPERFLEX and Victor Ash, are exhibited at 1:1 scale – the original size of the art envisioned for BIG’s buildings and urban projects globally. One of the highlights features the original house from Lars Von Trier’s serial killer thriller ‘The House That Jack Built’ which premiered at Cannes Film Festival in May. Designed by BIG, the house is shaped by the building material and not for the fainthearted!

Big Art explores the field where art and architecture intersect, placing particular emphasis on the special challenges and demands artists face when working on a vast scale in architectural and urban spaces. The exhibition title, Big Art, has a dual meaning: every artist featured has been chosen on the basis of their collaboration with BIG and at the same time the exhibition presents art on a large scale, showing each individual piece at the original size envisioned for its intended urban setting.

The exhibition transforms the 1,000 m2 south wing of Kunsthal Charlottenborg into an architectural landscape that welcomes visitors to explore BIG’s creative collaborations with a total of nineteen contemporary artists: A Kassen, Victor Ash, Douglas Coupland, Es Devlin, Shepard Fairey, Peter Funch, Julie Edel Hardenberg, Jeppe Hein, HuskMitNavn, John Kørner, Benoit Maire, Tomás Saraceno, Kaspar Astrup Schröder, Snarkitecture, SUPERFLEX, Martin de Thurah, Lars von Trier, Andrew Zuckerman, Ai Weiwei. The exhibition is curated by Michael Thouber in collaboration with BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group.

Bjarke Ingels Group
Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) is a Danish architectural firm founded by Bjarke Ingels in 2005, comprising a large team of architects, designers, urbanists, landscape architects, interior designers, product designers, researchers and inventors. With offices in Copenhagen, New York and London, the group is currently involved in a large number of projects throughout Europe, Northern America, Asia and the Middle East.

BIG combines a range of disciplines to create buildings and urban spaces that surprise and create new experiences. BIG integrates multicultural exchanges, global economic flows and communication technologies in their orchestration of architecture and urban development, working with what they term ‘pragmatic utopian’ architecture which seeks to merge aspects such as everyday life, leisure, work, parking and shopping with elements such as art, philosophy and contemporary movements.

The exhibition is supported by the A. P. Møller Foundation, Augustinus Foundation, Danish Arts Foundation, Knud Højgaards Foundation, Obel Family Foundation, Oticon Foundation. Sponsored by Arkitekturministeriet, HAY, Marazzi, MOON, Lukas Dong Films.