The Eye in the Mask

Exhibition views : © Socle du monde, Biennale & Carl-Henning Pedersen & Else Alfelts Museum, photos by Ole Jørgensen.

The Eye in the Mask

Socle du monde, 7th Biennale 2017, Chapter 6
To challenge the Earth,the Moon,the Sun & the Stars

Carl-Henning Pedersen & Else Alfelts Museum
Herning, Denmark

April, 18 - August, 27, 2017

With Romuald Hazoumè

Curator: Jean-Hubert Martin

The Biennale"socle du monde" is a tribute to the Italian artist Piero Manzoni (1933-63), the provocateur whose epoch-making work Socle du Monde
(Base of the World) from 1961 lends its name to the Biennale. HEART - Herning Museum of Contemporary Art owns the largest public collection of Manzoni works in the world, thanks to the initiative of Danish shirt manufacturer Aage Damgaard (1917-1991), who invited Danish and foreign artists to work on location. With a growing international collection,  Damgaard decided to donate the collection to a new museum Herning Art Museum which opened in 1977.

The 7th edition of denmarks oldest biennale for contemporary art  challenges the past, present and the future. The 2017 version of Socle du Monde Biennale is subtitled: To challenge the Earth, the Moon, the Sun & the Stars. Not only a tribute to Manzoni, it pays homage to all great artists, before and after, who accepted the challenge of turning our world upside down.  Consequently, Socle du Monde 2017 is a new exhibition platform, challenging the artists and coaxing them into experimenting with the past, the present, and the future. ?The fact that Manzoni, with his epoch-making residency in Herning, produced art that made world history, obviously begs a gathering up of the past and continuously challenging the future, specifically here in Herning?, says Holger Reenberg, Director at HEART.

The exhibition "The Eye in the Mask" juxtaposes a range of ethnographic masks with works of art by the two Danish CoBrA artists Carl-Henning Pedersen and Asger Jorn, African CoBrA artist Ernest Mancoba and several international contemporary artists: Romuald Hazoumé (Benin), Shen Yuan (China), Charles Fréger (France) and Antony Gormley (Great Britain). The Eye in the Mask spans 2000 m2, taking up the entire museum and spilling out into its environs.

The main focus of the exhibition falls on masks and identity. This encompasses physical masks, as shown by means of ethnographic objects used for rituals and dances, making the function of masks very tangible: putting a mask on allows you to become someone else. But it also concerns the use of various mask motifs in art ? many artists of the past and present have been inspired by the identity-changing potential of the mask: covering your face allows you to escape the human condition, replace your physical vessel with another, clothing yourself in the guise of a divine or animal being. The mask confers strength, power and abilities far beyond those of ordinary mortals. Hence, the mask is a tool that lets you change your identity.


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