Rooted in art historical painting—think adorned bodies in full attire indicating social rank and status, by masters such as Hieronymus Bosch, Eugène Delacroix, or Peter Paul Rubens—painter Anna Rettl drafts human-sized canvases that enlarge existing figures while stripping their bodies entirely bare. Removing all clothes and markers, Rettl creates an anatomical study of the bodies of a certain time and ideology, as if focusing on the naked truth of an era.

For her upcoming solo exhibition at O—Overgaden, Rettl is producing an entirely new painting series focused around early 20th-century modernism in her region of origin: between Austria, Slovenia, and Italy. Thus investigating the figures depicted during the rise of fascism in central Europe, her canvases contain lean, distorted bodies in various states of agitation trying to meet a new industrial and capitalist world order, presented as a cabinet of corpses crawling on all surfaces and amid the spaces of O—Overgaden’s upper floor’s main spaces.

Anna Rettl (b. 1992, AUT) graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Copenhagen (2021) and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna (2014), and she participated in the MAUMAUS Independent Study Programme in Lisbon in 2018. Rettl’s recent exhibitions include Reigen, Outpost Gallery (2021); AFGANG 2021, Kunsthal Charlottenborg (2021), and Skelettynd Grænse with Clara Busch, Arcway (2019), all in Copenhagen. She is part of the nomadic artist-run space Jennifee-See.

This August, Cally Spooner transforms one of O—Overgaden’s exhibition spaces into a research laboratory, and dance and sound studio, in which collaborators arrive to collide, and support the making of new repertoire for an opera in progress. A room-size projection of a dance-work to camera titled Maggie’s Solo (2021) will be screened, serving as a study, a tool, and a backdrop against which new works and conversations will be researched and developed live. Maggie Segale, the dancer from the video, hosts a week-long workshop in flesh and blood to evolve Maggie’s Solo into a new dance work; typographer Will Holder scores Maggie’s Solo’s audio feed; Cally Spooner workshops an immersive soundtrack with a group of local children; and a series of talks on collaboration, care, and duration is programmed in collaboration with the University of Copenhagen.

Cally Spooner (b. 1983, UK) is the current research fellow at O—Overgaden, in association with the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and the University of Copenhagen (2021–24), where she is completing her PhD. Spooner’s 5-part series of essays A Hypothesis of Resistancehas been workshopped and live edited at O—Overgaden, and is currently being published by Mousse Magazine(#81, Fall 2022 to #85, Fall 2023),the last of which will unfold the subject of the exhibition at O—Overgaden:Duration.Spooner’s recent institutional solo exhibitions have taken place at the Art Institute of Chicago; the Swiss Institute, New York; Castello di Rivoli, Turin; the New Museum, New York; and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

As a prelude to Danish artist Rasmus Myrup’s upcoming grand-scale commission at the Gothenburg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (GIBCA) opening in September 2023, the queer sculptor and renegade-naturalist mythmaker creates a visually dense presentation for O—Overgaden that spans faux runestones, an assortment of holes, a pine chandelier, thirst trap paintings, and other paraphernalia. The show will take place in O—Overgaden’s historic upstairs front space.

The opening weekend will include a presentation by Myrup as well as João Laia, the chief curator of GIBCA’s 2023 edition, anticipating the upcoming international exhibition in Gothenburg. Known for his long-term investment in building a tongue-in-cheek update of the pan-Nordic Norse pantheon of folkloric folks, Myrup connects the Scandinavian harbor cities of Copenhagen and Gothenburg through his mythological diggings.

Rasmus Myrup (b. 1991, DK) is a graduate of the Funen Art Academy and has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in venues including Kunstverein Göttingen (2023), Jack Barrett, New York (2022), and Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2020). He recently published his first book,The Völva’s Bestiary of Best Friends, co-published by s/z and Coda Press (2023).

Taking our popular culture as a point of departure, Cassie Augusta Jørgensen focuses on the stereotypical (mis)conceptions of the trans woman when her first institutional solo exhibition takes over O—Overgaden this autumn.

Cassie Augusta Jørgensen (1991, DK) is a visual artist, choreographer, and dancer living in Berlin, educated at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (2022). In recent years, Jørgensen has perfected her showgirl-ship through her work with theater, acting, her background in classical and modern dance, her favorite underwear, and with references to everything from filmmakers such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Brian De Palma to inspiring artists such as Valeska Gert, Lindsay Kemp, Hollywood Lawn, and Jackie Curtis. Jørgensen’s works are shaped by by film, History of Dance, and being a trans girl, in all its tragedy and liveliness. Her practice creates folds and gaps in history that speculate on fiction and reality and bring new narratives to our attention. Jørgensen has previously been exhibited by Auto Italia London, 1.1 Basel, and Sophiensaele Berlin.

Julie Falk’s sculptural and filmic practice works between questions on systemic power and autonomi, between vulnurability, illness, and structural (over)regulation – who will win in the hierarchies of the everyday life? In her feminist and almost surreal works, Falk often collects recognizable objects from the street, our garbage, the backyards of the city, which she rearranges, recreates or enlarges so that a launched firework mortar tube or a cardboard box turns into large scale sculptures or visual surfaces. Falk puts a value to the abandoned, missing, and abject in life, like when she converts her experience with illness and hospital stays into a new video filmed at the roof of the national hospital – the helipad of Riget – as an image of an bodily urge to escape from treatment.

Julie Falk (b. 1991, DA) is an artist educated from Malmö Art Academy. Her past solo- and group exhibitions where shown at institutions including All all all, Copenhagen (2023), KØS Museum for kunst i det offentlige rum, Denmark (2018), Galleri Susanne Ottesen, Copenhagen (2021), and in 2023, she received Anne Marie Carl Nielsen’s talent prize for sculptors.

Combining Zahna Siham Benamor’s poetic writing and performance work—focusing on BIPOC and feminist questions while rooted in her social work with Danish NGOs such as Kvinfo and RED Safehouse—and Apolonia Sokol’s continuous painterly employment of portraiture as an empowering tool for a community of feminist, queer, and gender-fluid positions—this collaborative exhibition will present a grand new installation, where an entirely new body of Sokol’s paintings combine into a theatrical scenery where sound, poetry, and live readings by Benamor and an extended network of voices will be staged. 

Apolonia Sokol (b. 1988, FR) is a Paris based artist of Danish, Polish, and French origin educated from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris (2015). The HBO co-produced documentary ”Apolonia, Aplonia” by filmmaker Lea Glob which follows Sokol’s life and career over a decade has recently been laureated at CPH:DOX 2023, among other film festival. Sokol has had solo and group exhibitions at venues including THE PILL, Istanbul (2022 & 2018); Sebastien Ricou, Brussels (2016); Whitcher Projects, Los Angeles (2016); MO.CO Panacee, Montpellier (2023); Fondation Pernod Ricard, Paris (2022), Viva Villa, MUCEM, Marseille (2022); Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas (2022); and Villa Médicis, Rome (2021).

Zahna Siham Benamor (b. 1988, DK) is a Danish artist with Algerian and French origin. She has a background in social work engagements at e.g. Kvinfo, RED Safehouse, and the female section of Mændenes Hjem, Copenhagen. Benamor is about to release the EP Jeg kommer fra Ørkenen (2023). She has produced the podcast Normkritisk omsorg in collaboration with DJ HVAD and Sofie Cerqueira (2021), published a literary piece for the online magazine HVERMANDAG (2022),and worked with Apolonia Sokol e.g. as a scriptwriter on the documentary Apolonia, Apolonia (2023). 

Panteha Abareshi’s sculptural and video practice as well as extensive scholarly writing is based on their personal and systemic experience of living with disability. In their recent body of work, Abareshi unapologetically addresses the tabooed relation between the disabled body—and its dependency on support structures, from the wheelchair and medical tubes to human care—and questions of domination and subjugation, with all its fetishist, erotic implications. Springing from this recent work, Abareshi will develop a new series of works for their grand solo at O – Overgaden, opening in May 2024.

Panteha Abareshi (b. 1999, US/TZ) is a Los Angeles based artist whose works have been shown in solo and group exhibitions at venues including Kunsthall Trondheim (2023), Hunter Shaw Fine Arts, Los Angeles (2022), Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (2021), MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2022), Kunsthaus Zürich (2022), 1969 Gallery, New York (2022) and Shape Arts, London (2020).

A solo dancer on a platform - high-tension energy and mechanic movements – but with an almost dead facial expression in an automatized, perhaps even drained-from-happiness performance: In Aske Thiberg’s video, text, and performances he portraits a robot-like body of the digital world, the loneliness of a gamer, and questions the social distance and melancholy of SoMe. For O—Overgaden, Thiberg creates a grand new live performance show that changes the opening hours of O—Overgaden and presents itself as a event series of choreographies to explore the fading lines between reality and virtual life.

Aske Thiberg (b. 1994, SE/DK) is a new gradute from the Royal Danish Academi of Fine Arts (2023) who lives and works in Copenhagen and Stockholm. He has performed and exhibited at institutions including Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2023), Den Frie Udstillingsbygning, Copenhagen (2022), Malmö Konstmuseum, Malmo (2022), Udstillingsstedet Sydhavn Station, Copenhagen (2020 & 2022).