Beata Ruris Otia
Fungis Danicis

Blissful Hours in Nature Among
the Danish Fungi

“Convinced, though, that there is nothing insignificant in all of nature, and that everything the highest power has brought forth and sustains is worth investigating, I gave up my idle hours in my younger years to occupy myself with these small growths — since the creatures we take to be the smallest are just as great a wonder as the largest.”
— Theodor Holmskjold

At Sophienholm Manor, North of Copenhagen, we curated and staged this exhibition about fungi in art and science.

The exhibition takes its title from a 1790 book of that name, by Theodor Holmskjold, the man who also had Sophienholm built and lived there during the late 1700s.

The book is a beautifully illustrated treatise on Danish fungi, one of the first of its kind in the world — a rare and cherished masterpiece among mycologists and bibliophiles alike.

All the illustrations from the book are hung throughout the rooms alongside works by contemporary and older artists from Denmark and abroad.

Above and below is an installation by Japanese-French NATSUKO UCHINO who used found materials from the park (including shelf fungi that grow on tree trunks) as well as ceramics and adobo pieces created in the artist’s studio in Southern France.

In the next room (below) were pieces by turn-of-the-century Danish painter, PETER ILSTED, alongside avant-garde New York artist PAUL THEK with works from the 1960s and 70s.

PETER ILSTED’s pieces include a painting of his wife cleaning chanterelles in their kitchen.

PAUL THEK’s pieces are pencil drawings of boletes from his notebook and a found toy, a humming top, painted over to resemble an archetypal fly agaric.

Russian-American SANYA KANTAROVSKY is displayed with Danish Arts and Crafts maker THORVALD BINDESBØLL and contemporary Danish painter OLIVER BAK.

BAK has painted a scene (“Restless Double”) of two human shapes among a lichen-like undergrowth (shown below).

KANTAROVSKY has contributed with two ceramic pieces — one a small porcelain work of mushrooms growths, another a more traditional vessel with mushroom decorations — plus a woven and embroidered piece of a supernatural scene of an anthropomorphized toadstool.

BINDESBØLL’s drawings are studies for ceramic works that use fungi as either shape or decoration.

The Dutch artist MAGALI REUS has created photo assemblages of fungal scenes, in a series that explores nature, agriculture and exploitation (seen below).

Below is an etching by the German Nobel Prize winner in literature, GÜNTER GRASS. Besides writing, he was also an avid mushroom collector and illustrator.

GRASS is displayed alongside a collection of study specimens of large mushrooms from The Museum of Natural History (seen above).

The Japanese artist SHIGEO OTAKE paints tiny pictures of mushrooms in folkloric scenes. For this show he has contributed with examples from his ongoing research project, documenting cordyceps — the parasitic fungus that takes an insect as its host and sends messages to its brain in order to manipulate it into moving to the optimal spot for spreading its spores. The fungus then sends its fruiting body through the exoskeleton of the insect, killing the host while letting the fungus thrive.

In the same room are examples of dried and pressed specimens from The Museum of Natural History — possibly by Theodor Holmskjold, though this is impossible to verify.

Below is an installation by Vibeke Glarboe — three room-size mushrooms in plaster, a meditation on scale and immersion (seen below).

NIKOLAJ HOWALT, also a hobby mycologist as well as renowned visual artist, has created spore growths on photo-sensitive gelatin, resulting in starry night-like scenes. Another example of exploring what happens when the smallest things are scaled up.

He also made bronze casts of true to life mushrooms.

The final room in the show is EBBE STUB WITTRUP, who uses the illustrations and pages from HOLMSKJOLD’s book, altered and manipulated in different ways. A possible subversive act against having to categorize and sort every single thing in the world into neat boxes.

Lastly, Sophienholm’s greenhouses had sgraffito drawings of mushrooms scratched from the chalked-over window panes, done by NATSUKO UCHINO.

CREDITS:

Curation:
Mathias Mentze & Alexander Vedel Ottenstein

Participating Artists:
Oliver Bak (dk)
Thorvald Bindesbøll (dk)
Vibeke Glarbo (dk)
Günter Grass (de)
Nicolai Howalt (dk)
Peter Ilsted (dk)
Sanya Kantarovsky (us)
Shigeo Otake (jp)
Magali Reus (uk)
Paul Thek (us)
Natsuko Uchino (jp/fr)
Ebbe Stub Wittrup (dk)

Photo Documentation:
David Stjernholm