The 2024 exhibition programme surveys solo presentations by leading artists Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, and Sarah Sze who challenges us to question social and political norms, capitalism, and freedom in a world saturated by mass media and complex visual systems.  

In parallel, ARoS 2024 exhibition programme promises an expansive look at the spiritual zeitgeist and on how the universe and the passing of times shapes us. In the transhistorical group exhibition Sky Gazing, we look towards the heavens in anticipation of the grand 2025 opening of The Dome, a monumental new Skyspace by American artist James Turrell. 

“ARoS will reverberate with sensory experiences in one of our most powerful programmes yet,” says ARoS Museum Director Rebecca Matthews.   

“In 2024 we hope visitors will be moved by the provocations of artists who have made it their mission to reflect on the world in all its majesty and in all its contradiction. The 2024 programme jolts the senses, asks deep questions, and disquiets any complacency we might have. Bold, adventurous and challenging it is a programme for the hearts and minds of all ages, as we embark on our next 20 years.”  

The Danish modernist icon Richard Mortensen is honoured in a landmark retrospective, and an exciting new voice to Denmark, artist Soheila Sokhanvari,  invites us to reflect on the experiences of women in pre-revolutionary 1970s Iran and the parallels with the extreme violence and challenges faced by women in Iran – and across the world – today.   

“With new perspectives on familiar figures like Richard Mortensen and the chance to immerse yourself in the radical glamour of pre-revolutionary Iran or the power of Barbara Kruger’s critical word plays, our 2024 programme will show how art of the past and present connects with its time. Now, more than ever, we need the diverse voices of artists who give us a path through uncertainty and offer hope for a collective future,” says Director of Exhibitions and Programme Catherine Ince.   

In 2024, ARoS is also celebrating 20 years in its home on Aarhus’ ARoS Allé. We will mark this important milestone with a year-long programme of special events and activities. ARoS’  collection of Danish and international art will be celebrated in new, trailblazing displays. 

Exhibition Programme 2024:  

The Cosmos Within

2. December 2023 – 7. April 2024, Level 1

The Cosmos Within mirrors the spiritual zeitgeist and is the first exhibition in ARoS' new ambitious exhibition trilogy Making New Worlds viewing in 2023, 2025, and 2027. This series of exhibitions each explore how artists to respond to the complex, digitised world we inhabit, and imagine new futures. 

The Cosmos Within features an extraordinary group of artists whose practices deal with questions of human behaviour, societal conditions, identity, connections to nature, and where we find might find community in an increasingly polarised world. 

A woven temple filled with dried aromatherapeutic medical herbs, a soundscape of healing timbres and vibrations, and a large-scale video and sound installation following a group of mysterious furry creatures. These are just some of the aesthetic and transcending experiences visitors can delve into when ARoS opens The Cosmos Within.  

This immersive and multidisciplinary group exhibition provides inspiration for other ways of understanding today's modern world. 

The Cosmos Within presents work by Ei Arakawa (b. 1977), Emma Kunz (1892-1963), Emma Talbot (b. 1969), Evan Ifekoya (b. 1988), Jeremy Shaw (b. 1977), Patricia Domínguez (b. 1984), Rachel Rose (b. 1986), Susan Hiller (1940-2004), Suzanne Treister (b. 1958), Tabita Rezaire (b. 1989), Tori Wrånes (b. 1978), Yussef Agbo-Ola, (b. 1990) and Zheng Bo (b. 1974) who all consider their art works portals leading the observer into new, sensory realms. 

Using symbols, magical narratives, rituals, and meditative spaces, the 13 artists work in textiles, drawings, photographs, paintings, and immersive performance and video installations to suggest alternative and sensual worlds, where our relationship with nature, the body and the spiritual are rethought and revived. 

On the opening night, Norwegian artist Tori Wrånes will sing to the audience as a divine and earthly voice in a performance specially created for the exhibition.  

Curator: Maria Kappel Blegvad 
Co-curator: Jeppe Ugelvig

Soheila Sokhanvari
Rebel Rebel 

13. January – 2. June 2024, Level 5 Focus-gallery

Mixing Islamic geometries, western pop references, and classic portrait paintings, Iranian artist Soheila Sokhanvari (b. 1964) pays an extravagant, hyperpolitical, and heartfelt tribute to the significant courage of female icons from pre-revolutionary 1970s Iran.  

Sokhanvari’s first solo exhibition in Denmark features 21 exquisite miniature portraits of once celebrated Iranian women including Vida Ghahremani, the first woman to be kissed in close up in popular Filmfarsi cinema; the controversial modernist poet Forough Farrokhzad; and the leading intellectual and writer Simin Dāneshvar. 

The exhibition title, Rebel Rebel, borrows from David Bowie’s 1974 cult song to remind us that these women pursued their careers in a culture enamoured with Western art and style but not its freedoms.  

The title also serves as a lament to the fate of these women. After the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the subsequent establishment of a conservative Islamic theocracy, they were left with a stark choice: to renounce any role in public life, or to be forced into exile. 

Sokhanvari currently lives and works in Cambridge as a studio artist at Wysing Arts Centre since 2013. Her multidisciplinary work weaves layers of political histories with intriguing, mysterious, and often humorous narratives.  

In Rebel Rebel, each of Sokhanvari’s delicate portraits is hung against a hand-painted mural based on traditional Islamic geometries. This absorbing pattern covers the entire gallery; alongside the portraits Sokhanvari has created mesmerizing, sculptural mirrored forms, which feature internal projections drawn from classic Iranian cinema.  

Flowing through the exhibition is a new soundtrack, composed by Marios Aristopoulos, which weaves together songs by celebrated Iranian singers from the mid-20th century, an especially poignant gesture given it remains illegal for a woman’s voice to be broadcast in Iran. 

The exhibition is produced in close collaboration with the artist and was originally commissioned by the Barbican, London.

Curator: Ellen Drude Langvold

Richard Mortensen
Between Lines

23. March – 1. September 2024, Level 5

A true modernist icon, and one of the driving forces of Surrealism in Denmark, Richard Mortensen (1910–1993) is exhibited in a landmark retrospective focusing on the artist’s impressive contributions within, but especially outside of Denmark. 

Form, surface, space, colour, point, and line. Every detail is carefully considered – or deliberately unleashed – in Mortensen’s strict yet playful idiom. Between Lines is the first major retrospective in 30 years and includes more than 80 paintings and works on paper from across Mortensen’s momentous 60-year career. 

Richard Mortensen pioneered a new approach to abstraction motivated by his deep belief in the power of art and its potential for social change. First through Surrealist experiments in the 1930s and later as a leading figure of concrete art, showing with Galerie Denise René in Paris in the 1950s. 

Historical, literary, geographical, and political references constantly appear in the titles of Mortensen’s works and typify his desire to shed light on political issues of the time. His work to develop a purely abstract visual language was followed through to monumental scale in the 1970s. 

Against the backdrop of global political turbulence of the 1960s onwards, Mortensen worked towards an ever-increasing simplification of form. He sought inspiration in Zen Buddhism and Taoism with its sense of purity and the interdependence of complementary forces, right up until his death in 1993.  

Curator: Victoria Christiansen

Sarah Sze
Metronome

18. May – 20. Oktober 2024, Level 1

Sarah Sze’s (b. 1969) new site-specific installation Metronome (2023) questions our image-saturated existence. Flickering videos illuminate an open and dynamic hemisphere constructed of thin stainless-steel tubes and swirl around the surrounding space, conveying the velocity and volatility of living in the age of the smartphone. 

Since the late 1990s, New York-based artist Sarah Sze has developed a distinctive sculptural idiom that challenges the static nature of sculpture. In recent years, Sze has been working on the realisation of large-scale installations under the collective title Timekeepers. 

Metronome is commissioned by ARoS in partnership with Artangel, London and OGR, Turin, and is the largest immersive installation from Sze’s renowned Timekeepers series.  

The core of Metronome is a compelling and dynamic media installation, in which the visitor encounters Sze's contemplation of the hurricane-like conditions that characterize today's unrelenting image-driven digital development.  

Inside and around this ever-changing complex sculpture, Sze has placed a multitude of everyday objects, alongside white paper flowers, photographs, and moving images from screengrabs to found media. 

Through blurred shots of a naked arm in front of a foggy bathroom mirror, visitors are invited into the intimate confines of the home. From there, we are taken into the wild, where shots of a leopard running, a swarm of birds or an erupting volcano flash by, and onwards into the star-studded sky. 

Metronome is soundtracked by the familiar and consistent click of the eponymous timing device, heightening our sense of time and space as we immerse ourselves in the installation’s matrix of environments and ecosystems.  

This intriguing, fragile and meticulous assemblage itself becomes a source of imagery for novelty-hungry social media accounts – a post-mortem of our smartphones, with their infinite capacity for creating, storing, and conveying images. 

Curator: Maria Kappel Blegvad

Sky Gazing  

5. Oktober 2024 – 16. February 2025, Level 5

Sky Gazing explores the ways artists have considered and been inspired by the vast spaces and events of the universe and its impacts on art and nature here on Earth.   

Including works by celebrated contemporary artists Douglas Gordon (b.1966), Angelica Mesiti (b.1976), Roni Horn (b.1955), Søren Thilo Funder (b.1979) and more, Sky Gazing also presents Danish and European masters, whose works broaden our understanding of man’s eternal fascination with sky gazing from the observational to the abstract. 

The sky is hidden, symbolic and sacred in works from Dutch still life, Danish Romanticism, and Italian journey paintings, reminding us that the sky holds significance in many cultures. 

Sky Gazing also includes important modernist works by Wassily Kandinsky (b.1866-1944), Alexander Calder (b.1898-1976), and Ib Geertsen (b.1919-2009) who each explore the sky through symbols and distillations, and it introduces Danish audiences to the beautiful spirit works of Australian indigenous artist Naminapu Maymuru-White (b.1952) whose larrakitj (memorial poles, ed.) tell the story of the Milky Way, The River and the ‘everytime’ place of souls who travel between the sky and earth. 

British artist Tacita Dean (b.1965) records the duration of the 1999 eclipse, allowing animals and landscape to tell the tale of this mysterious event which periodically interrupts normality. Her one-hour film installation captures the failing light and the second dawn – a birth, a Genesis, a resurrection – which transforms the senses. 

Visitors will also experience the immersive cosmos created by renowned Scottish artist, Katie Paterson (b.1981), who invents a galaxy from a dazzling disco ball of photographed eclipses.  This is brought together with her prepared piano piece Earth-Moon-Earth (Moonlight Sonata Reflected from the Surface of the Moon) 2007 in which the moon ‘plays’ Beethoven’s composition via satellite bounce. 
 
Lucienne Rickard (b.1981) will perform her epic Extinction drawing and erasure act to bring attention to loss and the crisis we now face in the age of the Anthropocene. From hope and heaven to dread and loss, the Sky Gazing journey is a grand contemplation of shifting sensibilities and stark truths told through the imagination and observations of artists across time. 

Guest Curator: Juliana Engberg

Barbara Kruger
No Comment 

30. November 2024 – 21. April 2025, Level 1 and Atrium

As a critical observer of popular culture, feminist, and conceptual powerhouse Barbara Kruger (b. 1945) – one of the most influential artists of our time – grapples with power dynamics, late capitalism, and media overload in the most comprehensive presentation of her work in Denmark. 

No Comment surveys Kruger’s digital productions of the past two decades: her signature text and image 'paste-ups'; large-scale, vinyl wall and floor installations; multi-channel films and soundscapes. 

By skilfully harnessing the seductive power of advertising, Kruger combines images drawn from mass-media with concise, authoritative language to question social and power relations.  

Rendered in bold Futura and Helvetica typefaces, I shop therefore I am (1987) and Your body is a battleground (1989) have become universal cultural idioms, loaded with sharp-edged critique. Like many of Kruger’s prescient works, in 2022 Your body is a battleground regained attention after pro-choice protests in America, sparked by the U.S. Supreme Court overturning the 1973 Roe vs. Wade abortion rights ruling.   

For over forty years, Kruger’s astute observations of consumer society have reflected and anticipated our current condition: globalised culture connected by a continuous flow of images, endlessly remade to dizzying affect. Kruger’s 2020 three-channel video installation Untitled (No Comment) mimics the randomness of internet and social media browsing, with a stream of images and text bombarding the viewer - from a cat lip-synching to Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s hit song ‘Shallow’, to memes, adverts, hair tutorials and photographs of people in front of Kruger’s own artwork.  

In a special commission responding to ARoS’ unique architecture, visitors will experience the powerful force of Kruger’s monumentally scaled text wraps throughout the Level 1 atrium and beyond. Kruger’s bold statements will spill out across Aarhus on urban infrastructure, from banners and billboards to hoardings and building wraps. 

Barbara Kruger’s exhibition is presented in collaboration with the Serpentine Gallery, London, where it opens to the public on 1 February 2024.

Curator: Ellen Drude Langvold and Catherine Ince

The ARoS Collection

Ron Meuck
Art and Life 

10. February 2024 – 5. January 2025, Level 6

Ron Mueck’s monumental hyperreal sculpture Boy (1999) joined ARoS’ collection after its debut at the Venice Biennale in 2001. Since Boy’s first ARoS display in 2004, the sculpture has played an important role in marking ARoS’ ambition to collect outstanding works of contemporary international art.  

Boy is synonymous with ARoS and a reason many people come to visit the museum from far and wide. To mark Boy’s 20th anniversary in ARoS, we will restage our display of Boy in a special presentation of Ron Mueck’s work alongside another of his captivating sculptures: A Girl (2006), a 5m long hyperreal, intricately detailed sculpture of a newborn baby girl. 

This special exhibition will provide a unique insight into one of the most compelling sculptors working today, and it will encourage visitors to consider the human body anew and bring to the fore both the trauma and the miracle of birth. 

Curator: Isabella Maidment

ARoS Collection
1960 – now

From February 10 2024, Level 6

In 2024, we renew our focus on ARoS’ significant collection of Danish and international art. In a newly conceived display in our collection gallery on Level 6, we encourage visitors to explore art since 1960 with fresh eyes. 

Bursting with colour and symbols, 1960– highlights the extensive dialogue and exchange of ideas, idioms, and perceptions characteristic of the second half of the 20th century.  

Visitors can look forward to a challenging encounter with Pop Art, Noveau réalisme, and Fluxus and a display of works by Andy Warhol (b.1928), Robert Rauschenberg (b.1925), Josef Beuys, and Raymond Hains (b.1926), amongst others. 

Early works and experiments by then-young Danish artists such as Lene Adler (b.1944), Bjørn Nørregaard (b.1947), Per Kirkeby (b.1938), Kirsten Ortwed (b.1948), and Poul Gernes (b.1925) will also be on view. This generation threw themselves into interpretating these international art movements and later became leading figures in Danish contemporary art.  

The collection display explores the critical awareness of the 1960s and 70s and charts a line to contemporary artists who continue to question social norms and institutions, power structures, and issues of representation and identity. Works by Mona Hatoum (b.1975), Gilbert Prousch (b. 1943) & George Passmore (b.1942), and Carsten Höller (b. 1961) all carry the legacy of the 1960s with their critical voices and innovative art practices. 

ARoS Collection
World in Focus 

22. June – 1. December 2024, Level 5 Focus-gallery

ARoS’ collection of photography takes centre stage in 2024, with the exhibition World in Focus featuring works by Wim Wenders (b.1945), Søren Lose (b.1972), Per Bak Jensen (b.1949), Erik A. Frandsen (b.1957), Joachim Koester (b.1962), Peter Henckel Holst (b.1966), Jeremy Shaw (b.1977), Miwa Yanagi (b.1967), Trine Søndergaard (b.1972), annika von hausswolff (b.1967), Jeannette Ehlers (b.1973), Astrid Kruse Jensen (b.1975) and Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen (b.1970). 

Since the advent of photography in the 19th century the endless possibilities offered by this elastic and ever-evolving medium has captivated artists in pursuit of new methods of representation.  

The artists on show are united by their experiments with image making to explore material and form, rethink the body, or play with scale. Their work invites visitors to understand the world anew by looking and seeing with fresh eyes. 

This new ARoS collection exhibition shows photography both as representation and abstraction with images that present us with beautifully captured landscapes or deeply psychological explorations. 

Curator: Jakob Vengberg Sevel 

Jenny Holzer
For Aros (2022) 

On view from 9. February 2023, Level 0

ARoS is adding a significant work by renowned American artist Jenny Holzer (b. 1950) to its impressive collection of international contemporary art.  

For Aros (2022) comprises three white marble benches and a multicolored LED sign measuring nearly three and a half meters in height. Each of the benches is engraved with ten texts from Holzer’s groundbreaking Truisms (1977–79), selected by the artist in close consultation with ARoS curators.  

The LED sign is programmed with selections from some of Holzer’s most iconic text series, including Truisms, Inflammatory Essays (1979–82), Living (1980–82), Survival (1983–85), Mother and Child (1990), and Arno (1996). 

The acquisition of Holzer’s work is of great importance to ARoS, as Holzer, along with Cindy Sherman and Barbara Kruger, is one of the greatest female artists of the postmodernist generation.  

Since Holzer had her artistic breakthrough in the 1970s, she has succeeded in sparking debate and sharpening our critical awareness by drawing attention to gender issues, power structures, and social injustice, among other things. In a world full of empty text messages and endless tweets, Holzer’s trailblazing work is more relevant than ever. 

For Aros will be installed as the opening centerpiece of ARoS’s gallery of installation art on Level 0. 

20th anniversay celebration 

April 5th, 6th and 7th 2024

2024 marks the 20th birthday of ARoS in its Schmidt Hammer Lassen-designed home on Aarhus’ Aros Allé.  

ARoS opened its new doors to the public on 7. April 2004. Exactly twenty years to the day, 
we will host a lively weekend birthday celebration with activities for children and families, special tours, a birthday cake, music and singing and all the things you would expect at a jubilee weekend! 

20!

To mark the past twenty years of ARoS we will publish 20!, a beautiful and visually rich new book exploring ARoS’ artistic highlights and its ground-breaking programme of art exhibitions and collecting since 2004.  

20! will showcase highlights and favourites from ARoS’ immense back catalogue of exhibitions, enjoyed by many over the past two decades. 

Alongside this we will compile a visual anthology of the most inspiring, beloved, celebrated and enjoyed artworks acquired by, donated to or commissioned by ARoS since 2004. 

Readers will enjoy reflections on ARoS from our network of artistic collaborators and friends, alongside a timeline charting key moments on our journey and looking forward to ARoS’ next chapter. 

20! Will be published on April 7th, to coincide with ARoS’ birthday weekend.

Press photos can be freely downloaded from Dropbox when giving due credit.

For additional information, please contact:

Astrid Ildor
Press and Communications Manager, ARoS 
(+45) 61 90 49 42
asil@aros.dk