Platform - Paula Duvå x Mynte Corell

In the exhibition space, a white light flashes from a translucent LED screen. You know the light that flashes, you meet it on your way in the dark. Advertisements light up the street from facades and turn the night sky into an indeterminate half-gray vault. In the exhibition space, the screen casts the flashing light onto small casts of oyster shells, reflecting and simulating the new light of the starry sky with their polished aluminum surfaces. 

What do we see when we look at the sky?
The sky is a recurring field of interest in visual artist Paula Duvå's practice in which she with a wondering eye examines the contrasting uses, imagery and connotations of the sky. It contains many signs and presents to us a space of dreams as well as knowledge. The sky contains answers about our past and future and is a space we orient ourselves towards scientifically, culturally and mythologically - in the attempt to understand our world. At the same time, in our technological development, the sky has become a place in which both private and state actors can capitalise and profit, and where demonstrations of power, territories and warfare increasingly begin to unfold.
 

Exchanges of power in the contrasting space of the sky
In the pursuit of profit, a new type of man-made light has become visible in the night sky. The lights may seem like little imaginative sparkly freight trains but are actually satellites. The light from the satellites can be seen as a harbinger of a new market-driven space race, a kind of space industrial revolution unfolding in the sky's space of potential and dreams. Together with the light from our cities, the escalating presence of satellites in space presents an increasing risk of extinguishing the starry sky, as a source of knowledge and making it impossible for us to seek information about the universe and thus about ourselves in the sky above us.

With the exhibition "Celestial Body", Paula again turns her gaze towards the sky and looks questioningly at how exchanges of power play out in the sky's contrast-filled and unregulated space of possibilities, knowledge and capital.

"Celestial Body" is created by Paula Duvå in collaboration with curator Mynte Corell.

The exhibition has been created with support from the Danish Arts Foundation, the Politiken Foundation and Beckett-Fonden. The exhibition space Platform has been realised with support from Det Obelske Familiefond.

"Celestial Body" can be experienced from 7 June to 28 July. There is a screening on Thursday 6 June at 16-19. On this occasion, chef Jonas Harboe Frederiksen unfolds his Pink Oyster passion in a small temporary oyster bar outside at Nikolaj Plads. Pre-book your oysters here.