COPENHAGEN.- Over the last 30 years, the Royal Collection of Graphic Art has continuously ac-quired photographs, primarily from visual artists using photographs as an integrated part of their working practice on a level with other art on paper. This collection stretches over the last 50 years with a few occasional digressions back into the 1920s and 1940s. The profile here is markedly different from the collections of photo museums. Here you will find not a broad representation of photographic history, but rather works that to a much greater degree are part of an overarching context in art history. One defining characteristic of the exhibition’s works is the fact that the artists often relate to the camera in a manner that is very open, experimental and at times even disrespectful. As such, photography was a way to try out new forms of artistic expression such as the conceptual art of the 1960s, in which photography experienced its breakthrough as a modern, critical media that stood in opposition to classical art forms.

The exhibition
The exhibition shows a broad selection of works by Danish and international artists and highlights critical ideas, concepts and strategies in the multiple histories of art and photography, which, when it comes down to it, cannot be taken separately, but rather live off one another. With some 250 works, the exhibition focuses on the photographic method, as well as its effect and relation to reality in an exhibition that unfolds along five themes across the bounds of place and chronology. The exhibition offers a narrative that spans the many forms of the medium – from experimental photography, via conceptual art and photography as a document, through to the subject-oriented products of staging and setting.

Artists
The exhibition will be showing works by the following artists: Helge Bertram (DK), Niels Bonde (DK), Kaspar Bonnén (DK), Peter Brandes (DK), Stig Brøgger (DK), Claus Carstensen (DK), Tacita Dean (UK), Olafur Eliasson (DK/ISL), Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset (DK/NO), Sylvie Fleury (CH), Erik A. Frandsen (DK), Anja Franke (DK), Poul Gernes (DK), Douglas Gordon (UK), Per Bak Jensen (Denmark), Kirsten Justesen (Denmark), Mike Kelley (USA), Joachim Koester (DK), Elke Krystufek, (AUS), Peter Land (DK), Sarah Lucas (UK), Man Ray (USA), Jonathan Meese (GER), Albert Mertz (DK), Mogens Otto Nielsen (DK), Hermann Nitsch (AUS), Lene Adler Petersen (DK), Sigmar Polke (GER), Richard Prince (USA), Jesper Rasmussen (DK), Jytte Rex (DK), Gerhard Richter (GER), Ane Mette Ruge (DK), Ed Ruscha (USA), David Shrigley (UK), Dash Snow (USA), Erik Steffensen (DK), Alfred Stieglitz (USA), Superflex (DK), William Louis Sørensen (DK), Wolfgang Tillmans (GER), Rosemarie Trockel (GER) and Gitte Villesen (DK).