Wide-eyed, open

Solo Exhibition, Politikens forhal, 2023.

Readers letter

Exhibition text and text brought in newspaper Politiken By Anna Stahn

To the cute little naive painter, to the ambivalent, to the lovely, the pig with the apple in his mouth, to the reader, the architect, the new building, the octopus woman, the winner.

You are so easy, you want the shocking and the special, the devilishly even; offenses in the newspapers of a childish nature you can mirror yourself in. You two are so wide-eyed and easy to offend; a red ponytail and a Jutlandic dialect, tears in your eyes in front of the tv, money sewn into your pillow; then you are invested.

As easy as it is for you to fall in love very suddenly, it's just as easy for you to hate very suddenly. For years, newspapers have been dropping through your letterbox and you only read the articles about food.

And you! The little genius, like all geniuses; sensitive and unworldly, full of freedom and pure creative urge, holding a small beer and a small brush, your big glistening eyes and your big glistening brush, blinking like a fool, decorating a state office, a bank with emotions and energies, big blinking eyes, a dirty t-shirt in a beautiful apartment. Whimsical, colorful, sweet, lovely, refreshing, youthful, energetic, free, wild. You tremble with love and envy at the freedom of others. It's all painted on.

Meanwhile, over in the corner you can buy services wrapped in sweet eyes. It's a professional job that no one sees.

And the buildings are sustainable and brutal, clean and smooth and spacious with room to let your imagination run wild, built to make people feel at home, feel small and modern. Alone in a village, almost a Roman village with windows that look like pickled brains, pickles in a jar.

And the sculptures should show us what we are a part of, or they should show us our strange little folk soul without diving into the dark sea that is the folk deep. Or they should tell us a version of something important that happened. Through men and pigs and dogs and horrible abstract things in roundabouts. Occasionally a woman. If there is a woman, she's probably naked inside a park or inside a bonnet carrying a child, an animal or a shopping bag of groceries. Today, modern human sculptures would be ordinary many-armed icons with their heads buried in commentary tracks, tying knots on themselves in yoga knots and busy exhaustion.

And the humans come to this wonderfully disgusting place in the city and are repulsed or enjoy feeling small and modern. And the money comes with a stench from the countryside of sweet shit, baby pigs with apples in their mouths, walking debt, riding debt and things to be swept under the carpet. You could make sculptures of the people who clean public school toilets, pay taxes, the invisible who build the necessary underbelly of our economy, instead of priests; mothers and pray for each other, honoring the noble ascetic comfort. Or you could make a sculpture of an insane siren, a menacing femme whose song no one hears.

- Anna Stahn, Visual artist, 29 years old, Copenhagen, Nørrebro.