The central aspect of the work of Jakob Kolding (born in Albertslund, Denmark, in 1972, lives and works in Berlin) is collage as a method for breaking up established hierarchies and interpretations and finding new, less conclusive and easily-defined standpoints. His works have a visual lexicon fed by the most diverse sources – a personal vocabulary made up of plastic arts, literature, music and theatre – to invite discussion of subjective ways of reading and associative narratives, which sound out identity as something arising from a ceaseless dialogue between society and individual. The most recent works are based on an extended concept of collage, which takes in the exhibition space itself; the large-scale installations are a sort of spatial collage, where visitors become part of the work.
This year, Kolding was part of the group exhibition, Political Affairs - Language Is Not Innocent. The silkscreen, which has been made exclusively for edition program of the Kunstverein in Hamburg, shows the silhouette of an upper body and a hooded head. Titled Formation the work plays on the double meaning of the formation of a personal identity and the formation of a larger group of people coming together. A body in movement, seemingly in the process of putting itself together. The figure suggests a personal identity being formed out of various different parts rather than existing as an isolated whole, or perhaps a larger body of people coming together as one, as a group forming a shared social or political identity, as for instance in a demonstration.
- Exhibitions:
- 2019
- Pieces, Galerie Martin Janda, Wien (S)
Political Affairs - Language Is Not Innocent, Kunstverein in Hamburg (G)
- 2018
- Movements, Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg (S)
- 2017
- The Outside or the Inside of the Internalised Externalised, Centre d’édition
contemporaine, Genf (S)
Dress Rehearsals, Sommer Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv (S)
self, portraits, Galleri Nicolai Wallner, Kopenhagen (S)
- 2016
- Another World with Difficulties, Team Gallery, Los Angeles (S)
- 2013
- Cut ’n’ Paste: From Architectural Assemblage to Collage City, Museum of Modern Art, New York (G)
- 2010
- Stakes Is High, Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam (S)
- 2001
- Jakob Kolding, Kunstverein in Hamburg (S)