Mette Vangsgaard | My head is on fire, my fur is itching

In her new collages Vangsgaard continues her staging of the spaces of the museums. Depicted in her own distinctive visual universe she lifts the veil for a peek into the silent exhibition halls of various objects from stuffed animals, planets, paintings and other cabinets with geological curiosities. The collages are in their fragmentary nature consisting of paper scraps, textile and pictoresque strokes not the least a testimony of Vangsgard’s artistic feelings for color and material, but her sense of composition as well creates particularly evocative images of often seemingly humorous or absurd depictions of our modern civilization. Thus Vangsgaard brings new perspectives into our museum exhibition spaces, and exposes the way in which we as humans throughout time have collected and structured our surroundings and history.

In correlation with the collages Mette Vangsgaard has made a series of ceramic sculptures of orangutangs presented in the exhibition in a single large installation. The orangutangs are all depicted in more or less human recognizable situations. Thus we see an orangutang rowing in a kayak, while others are situated on strange structures of morphed human limbs or small treetops. In all situations the monkeys seems alienated from their natural habitat, which possibly for most of us alarmingly enough will send tour thoughts to the way in which we in tradition have furnished our zoos.

Mette Vangsgaard’s My Head is on Fire, My Fur is Itching is framing a tale about our modern social thinking, that in her evocative imageries immediately exudes a sense of reliability, but will also when we look further into the details show the impossibilities of life. Namely how humans in the name of civilization and socialization use collections and archives in a somewhat better understanding of our everyday lives, and how we direct nature into sometime absurd situations.

Mette Vangsgaard graduated from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 1996, and in 2011 she was awarded the 3-Year Working Grant from The Danish Arts Council. My Head is on Fire, My Fur is Itching is Mette Vangsgaard’s first solo show since her 3-Year Grant.