Henrik Saxgren, Mors Sunset
05.02.22 - 18.09.22
‘It is a living coastline made of sand. Always becoming, always dying. Determined by the galaxies’ flux through the universe, drawn by storms, by the orbits of the sun and moon, and by human intervention, though the latter is only a short-lived issue, for the coastline has all the time in the world. It is a long and vivid tale of tides, always subject to the rhythms of the day, but in its reckoning of time it looks to eternity.’ (‘A Line in the World’ by Dorthe Nors and Henrik Saxgren).
Photographer Henrik Saxgren has depicted the Danish coastline from Skagen to the Wadden Sea with a slowness that defies the inherent immediacy of photography. For many years, Henrik Saxgren had reportage photography as his main focal point, depicting lived life and landscapes in many parts of the world – from Nicaragua to Thule. Many of these subjects are intense and dramatic, but Henrik Saxgren has subsequently sought a sense of slowness and immersion in his chosen subject matter, as is also reflected in the photographic aesthetic of the works exhibited in WEST COAST.
Henrik Saxgren’s line in the world consists of wide white sandy beaches, sloping windswept dunes, steep slopes and marshland. A landscape in ceaseless, restless motion. Suspended between man and the universe, this line is both changeable and cyclically infinite. Saxgren’s nature is not romantic; rather, it tells the story of a windswept unruly coast where the regularity of the circadian rhythm meets a threatening unpredictability, all depicted with authentic rawness. ‘A tribute to the nature we are in the process of destroying’. (quote: Henrik Saxgren).
The exhibition is the last for now in a series of exhibitions at HEART which seek to unpack and add nuance to the concepts of ‘wild nature’ and ‘cultivated landscape’. With the exhibition, HEART wants to invite audiences to reflect on our role in nature – and in the world. It follows in the footsteps of HEART’s previous instalments in the series, the first featuring Allan Otte’s paintings of agriculture and the agricultural landscape, and the second showing Søren Solkær’s photographs of starling murmurations, known in Denmark as ‘black sun’. Henrik Saxgren’s gaze has travelled down the west coast of Jutland, from Skagen to the Wadden Sea. Here we find a strip of Danish nature that refuses to be controlled.
The exhibition will contain approximately forty new photographs from the series A Line in the World (2021) and approximately ten photographs from Tøndermarsken (2019). Some of the works have been published in the critically acclaimed book En Linje i Verden, a collaboration between Henrik Saxgren and author Dorthe Nors. The show at HEART will be the first time that audiences have the opportunity to experience the works together.
The exhibition is supported by:
Politiken Fonden
Oda og Hans Svenningsens Fond
Overetssagfører L. Zeuthens Mindelegat
A.P. Møller og Hustru Chastine Mc-Kinney Møllers Fond til Almene Formål
Midtjydsk Skole- og Kulturfond