Uncompromising social design, hovering coffee cups and immersive installa­tions for the senses. On Thursday 16 March the ARKEN Art Prize was presented for the eleventh time, and this year’s recipient of the prize of DKK 100,000 is Danish artist Thomas Poulsen alias FOS.

FOS (b. 1971) is nationally and internationally acclaimed for his uncom­pro­mi­sing works that explore the intersections between architecture, design, art and per­for­mance. The artwork itself may be a camping caravan, a soap factory, the furni­shings of a fashion boutique, a concert programme or a floating bar. In works that combine functionality with popular appeal, FOS explores how our physical sur­­roundings and social relations influence one another. His works take their point of departure in what he calls ‘social design’. The works all have in common that they reach out into society and every­day life.

FOS, 2017. Photo: Henrik Jauert

Nina Beier, Allegory of Charity, 2015. Photo: Document Photography

ARKEN Travel Grant 2017

This year’s travel grants of DKK 50.000 were awarded to Astrid Myntekær and Peter Callesen.

Giant cocktails and hovering coffee cups

Nina Beier’s (b. 1975) enigmatic works consist of a wide variety of everyday objects in mys­te­rious and subtle compositions. Squashed wigs, savaged china dogs and vases, giant cocktails and hovering coffee cups surprise us on the one hand as artworks, on the other as absurd transformations of the familiar. Her surreal works are at once profoundly complex and extremely simple in their playful defi­ance of the force of gravity, the relationship between life and death and a standard 1:1 understanding of scale. Pivoting on the element of surprise, Beier completely transforms reality.

Nina Beier has been awarded the ARKEN Travel Grant 2017 because she elegantly and critically shakes up our world­view. When our habitual notions and ideas are challenged for a while, the poten­tial for new understandings arises.

Read more about ARKEN Travel Grant

Immersive installations

Marie Kølbæk Iversen (b. 1981) works with photography, video, light and sound installations. Her works tempt us with their seductive finish and their accurate and apparently simple construction, but behind the minimalist expression of the works lie complex technical structures and concepts. In several of her works the viewer is given a central place. Kølbæk Iversen’s abstract, colourful patterns engage us bodily and immerse us in installations that are all about the body, physica­lity and phenomena such as phantom limb pains. The works cloak poetic and existential narratives about what it means to be human.

Marie Kølbæk Iversen is awarded the ARKEN Travel Grant 2017 for her distinctive ability to render vis­ible invisible features such as bodily feelings and sensibilities. She expands the world of art by working across the boundaries of the sciences and the arts, as she gives pride of place to the vulnerable, sensing, active body.

Read more about ARKEN Travel Grant

Marie Kølbæk Iversen, Nine Bats, 2016. Photo: Anders Sune Berg