Med menneskekroppen og det tidløse landskab som metaforer for tilværelsens uundgåelige transformation indtager den danske billedkunstner Cathrine Raben Davidsen CCs udstillingsrum med et væld af ladede og intense billeder.

Udstillingen Let Everything Happen to You er den mest omfattende retrospektive soloudstilling af kunstnerens arbejde til dato. Den kaster lys over en mindre kendt og mere personlig del af Raben Davidsens praksis, der er rundet af erfaringer som tab, sorg og identitetssøgen. Gennem værkerne formidler kunstneren sin enorme maleriske spændvidde og følelsesmæssige kompleksitet, hvor undersøgelsen af menneskets sårbarhed og billedets kraft er i centrum.

FAMILIEPORTRÆTTER AF SORG
Med hovedvægt på maleri og tegning samler udstillingen over 130 værker udvalgt fra tre af kunstnerens væsentligste perioder; midt 90’erne, midt 10’erne og nutid. En betydelig del af værkerne udstilles for første gang.

I udstillingens centrale rum vises den hidtil største samlede præsentation af Raben Davidsens værker fra 1990 ́erne, der portrætterer hendes familie, barndom og teenageår.
I en ekspressionistisk stil spænder motiverne fra intime og psykologisk ladede portrætter over rå tegninger i olie, kul og blæk. Rummets hovedværk, maleriet Familie, skildrer en nøglebegivenhed i Raben Davidsens liv, nemlig det pludselige tab af faderen. Han døde af AIDS i 1985, da hun var 13 år gammel.

KUNSTEN SOM VIDNESBYRD
Op gennem 2010’erne flytter Raben Davidsen sit fokus fra at udforske det personlige tab til at undersøge mere universelle spørgsmål om menneskelig eksistens og samhørighed. Samtidig begynder hun at male billeder, hvis indhold har mere politisk karakter. Ved at tage sine motiver direkte fra nyhedsstrømmens reportagefotografier taler værkerne direkte til vores samtid. I disse billeder af ødelagte landskaber, af kroppe og ansigter mærket af krig antager Raben Davidsen en position som betragter og medieret vidne og lader værkerne blive vidnesbyrd på vor tids udfordrede humanisme.

Titlen Let Everything Happen to You er lånt fra den østrigske poet Rainer Maria Rilkes digt Go to the Limits of Your Longing (1905). Digtet beskriver den ubærlige, men uundgåelige sidestilling af skønhed og lidelse, der definerer menneskets liv og historie. På samme måde udfordrer Raben Davidsen med sine malerier og tegninger sit publikum til at engagere sig i de følelsesmæssige dimensioner af sorg og tab. Hvordan håndterer vi de ting, der sker med os – og hvordan kommer vi videre derfra?

LET EVERYTHING HAPPEN TO YOU

Using the human body and the timeless landscape as metaphors for life’s inevitable transformation, the Danish artist Cathrine Raben Davidsen takes over CC’s Hall 3 with an array of charged and intense images.

Let Everything Happen to You is the most comprehensive retrospective exhibition of Raben Davidsen’s work to date, sheds light on a lesser known, more personal aspect of a practice shaped by experiences of loss, grief and the search for identity. Here, the artist conveys her vast painterly range and emotional complexity, exploring human vulnerability and the power of images.

FAMILY PORTRAITS OF GRIEF
With an emphasis on painting and drawing, the exhibition brings together more than 130 works selected from three key periods of the artist’s career: the mid-1990s, the 2010s and the present. A substantial number of the works are shown for the first time.

The central room features the largest ever presentation of Raben Davidsen’s work from the 1990s, portraying her family, childhood and teenage years. Executed in an expressionist style, the works range from intimate, psychologically charged portraits to raw drawings in oil, charcoal and ink. The centrepiece, the painting Family, depicts a crucial event in the artist’s life, the sudden loss of her father to AIDS in 1985 when she was 13 years old.

ART AS TESTIMONY
Over the course of the 2010s, Raben Davidsen shifts
her focus from exploring her own personal loss to more universal questions of human existence and connection. At the same time, she begins to make paintings with more directly political content. Featuring subjects drawn from news photography, the works speak directly to our time. In her images of landscapes, bodies and faces devastated by war, Raben Davidsen occupies a position as observer and mediated witness, letting her art testify to the beleaguered humanism of our age.

The exhibition’s title is a line from a 1905 poem, Go to the Limits of Your Longing, by the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke. The poem describes the unbearable yet inescapable combination of beauty and suffering at the heart of human life and history. Likewise, Raben Davidsen’s paintings and drawings challenge the viewer to engage with the emotional dimensions of grief and loss. How do we deal with the things that happen to us, and how do we move on?

ABOUT CATHRINE RABEN DAVIDSEN (b. 1972)
Cathrine Raben Davidsen (b. 1972, Copenhagen)
is a graduate of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, and previously studied at art academies in Italy and the Netherlands. Raben Davidsen has exhibited widely in Denmark and abroad. She has executed major commissions, and her work is in the collections of many museums and institutions. Throughout her career, she has won numerous awards and honorary grants. In 2015, she was appointed Knight of the Order of Dannebrog by Her Majesty Queen Margrethe.

On view until 12 May 2024

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