CLAUS CARSTENSEN

KLAKSVIK AFFAIRS

4th of May - 11th of August

Danish artist Claus Carstensen has collaborated with the well-reputed Faroese graphic workshop Steinprent in Tórshavn for a number of years. During his first stay in 2002, Claus Carstensen made a small lithography, the title and text of which refer very directly to the radical, fateful conflict between the Faroe Islands and Denmark in the 1950s, known as the Klaksvík Controversy or the Klaksvík Affair.

Inspired by this print and taking a point of departure in Claus Carstensen's graphics productions at Steinprent, Faroese curator Kinna Poulsen has set up the exhibition Klaksvik Affairs, which is complemented by a number of the artist's other works.

Such themes as power-powerlessness, aggression-humiliation, territorialisation-de-territorialisation and identity are decisive for the whole of Claus Carstensen's oeuvre, and in the exhibited works these themes are placed in the context of the historical Faroese-Danish conflict.
In the manner of Carstensen, the works are often composed of numerous elements and layers and - quite consciously - they hold a challenging chaos and an ambiguity. But if one looks at the works with curiosity and explores them, manifold political references and recognisable biographical and historical fragments emerge in the midst of this savagery.  Thus the ambiguity plays a part in opening the works and leaving viewers free in their interpretation of them.