In mid-June I visited my hometown Aarhus, Denmark’s second city, roughly the size of Alicante. I stayed with my best friend Lars, who teaches ceramic and photography at Testrup Højskole, a folk high school (a uniquely Danish institution) focused on art, music and literature. Once a year, art works by Testrup students are exhibited in the main hall of the beautiful Aarhus City Hall. The selection is quite rigorous, since space is limited and there are many students at Testrup who create art. Here is a brief tour of the exhibition. I do not have the details of most of these works, so you will just have to interpret the works as you wish. The average age of Testrup students is 21, and for many (if not all) of these young artists this is the first time their works are exhibited. The assigned theme was “doubt”, which they clearly interpreted in very individual ways.
The venue. Aarhus Rådhus was opened in 1941 and is the city’s best known building.
The main hall, viewed from a 4th floor interior terrace. The large painting is “Menneskesamfundet” (“human society”) by Danish artist Thorvald Hagedorn-Olsen (1902-1996).
My friend Lars Koue Mogensen. We have been friends since our first year of high school in 1976.
This work is about making lemonade when life gives you lemons. The artist’s original intent was a ceramic fish. But it turned out too brittle and broke. So the artist added some thread and turned the work into something much more interesting.
