LIVING BRANCHES

The smell and feel of wood are well known, and like other elements of nature, wood has always inspired human creativity

Wood is a living material that offers countless opportunities for aesthetic reflection and visual artistic expression.

Asger Jorn did not work sculpturally with wood himself, but he had a great interest in the artistic processing of wood across space and time. Over the years, Jorn also collected hand-carved mythical and animal figures; mugs and bowls by local artisan Chresten Hull.

A large part of Museum Jorn’s wooden sculptures can be seen here in the exhibition areas with a view of the beautiful beech trees of the area around the museum. The exhibition focuses on how wood has been processed and interpreted in art – and what role the material wood has in the narrative conveyed by a work of art. By focusing on a single material, it becomes possible to experience the versatility of wood.

Discover abstract-expressive wooden sculptures from the 1930s and 1940s by Scandinavian artists related to the associations Linien and CoBrA: Sonja Ferlov Mancoba, Ernest Mancoba, Erik Thommesen, Ejler Bille and Sigurjón Ólafsson.

Gérard Voisin, Jan Holger Jerichau and Poul Vandborg represent the next generation while conceptual woodworks by Henning Christiansen, Bjørn Nørgaard and Richard Winther, on the other hand, testify to the avant-garde approach to the material.

“Living Branches” takes its title from Sonja Ferlov Mancoba’s sculpture of driftwood from 1935, which is a poetic remark on the living material that has inspired and challenged art over time.