Simon Dybbroe Møller Probes Into the Construction of an Image in ‘Thick & Thin'

Copenhagen’s Kunsthal Charlottenborg is showcasing a comprehensive survey into the work of Danish conceptual artist Simon Dybbroe Møller. Bypassing categorization, Møller explores existential questions through metaphoric installations, films, photographs and teachings, probing into the physicality and materiality of things, along with the ubiquitousness of representation.

The title of the show, Thick & Thin, relates to the ups-and-downs experienced throughout life and the musings between sculpture (thick) and a photograph (thin). At the entrance of the gallery lies Bags and Boulders, which consists of unassuming school backpacks on the floor, each filled with a boulder within its central compartment. The bags are slightly ripped to reveal a sliver of the rocky object within, giving a sense of familiarity on first glance, while hinting at the notion that children are the few members of society that can “disturb the institutional order,” said Møller in a statement.

Møller, who is also a professor at the School of Sculpture at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, chose to revisit the mythic bog body man, known as Grauballe Man. Discovered by a peat-cutter in 1952, Grauballe Man is considered one of the greatest discoveries from Denmark’s prehistoric period: a 2,000-year-old corpse whose throat had been slit and body thrown into a bog in Jutland, Denmark.

The bog had preserved his remains so well, that even his organs and fingerprints were in-tact millennia later. Møller’s Bag of Bones (2023) showcases a 3D scan of Grauballe Man through a video installation, where the corpse’s leathery skin has been reimagined through centuries of technological advancements. “In this video,” wrote the gallery, “the embodied image becomes a digital asset, a calculable object. Its wrinkled skin is rendered into a pliable texture map that can be manipulated ad infinitum.”

Central to the exhibition is an investigation into the construction of an image and how that marker of representation is constantly in a state of flux. Thick & Thin will be on view in Copenhagen until August 11, 2024.

Kunsthal Charlottenborg
Nyhavn 2,
1051 Copenhagen, Denmark