Frejas Sal: Cultivated Landscapes and Wild Gardens

Skovhuset Kunst & Natur once again addresses people's relationship to nature in the exhibition Frejas Sal. This time it is about cultivated landscapes and the dream of the wild nature. The artists are Hans Op de Beeck, Camilla Berner, Gerda Steiner & Jörg Lenzlinger, Søren Martinsen, Randi & Katrine, Luzia Simons and Hartmut Stockter.

It is perhaps one of the most traditional song phrases that Skovhuset uses with the title for the exhibition Frejas Sal. Because with it comes the picture of the fertile Danish summer landscape, as it is reproduced in the Danish national anthem. But the Danish nature today is deeply influenced by people and our treatment and use of it. It is this cultivated use as well as the often parallel dream of the wild nature that is at the center of the exhibition.

In Freja's Hall, seven artists and artist couples from home and abroad address the interplay between the natural and the artificial, the wild and the adapted nature. They do this through existing as well as brand new works. In installations, paintings, photographs, video works and sculptures, motifs emerge from both the backyard and agricultural areas, which through the artistic adaptations at once appear familiar and yet alienating. The anchoring in art and cultural historical traditions runs through several of the works. But it is the smooth transitions between the cultivated and wild nature that point to today's view of nature. It is a vision that both regrets the guilt of man in the collapse of nature, and which at the same time also shows that man can highlight the beauty of nature.

Freja's Hall offers thoughtful and humorous elements to the ongoing debate about what nature should look like. These are imaginative works that invite the visitor to take part in a game between the utilized or aestheticized nature and the notion of something more original and authentic.