This was the first time in ARKEN's history that an artist curated the permanent collection. The young artist Esben Weile Kjær has already achieved great recognition and success in the Danish and international art scene. He works with the imagery of popular culture and breaks down familiar distinctions between art and mainstream culture. When he does an art project, he also incorporates everything that usually lies outside the artwork as part of the project itself: from merchandise and press images that look like fashion campaigns, to logos and playlists. BUTTERFLY!  came to life in the museum, in urban spaces, on t-shirts and on social media.

“When I first visited ARKEN, I was 15 years old, I think. I remember the collection extremely clearly. The works looked the same as the world I had grown up in. Pop and dystopian at the same time.” - Esben Weile Kjær

The BUTTERFLY! exhibition invites guests to experience the works of ARKEN in a new scenography that resembles the scenery for a movie with skateparks, occupied bunkers and nightclubs. The places stand as clear memories from Esben Weile Kjær's childhood and youth. Graffiti-embellished concrete surroundings where hip streetwear was showcased, where underground parties took place and where like-minded people met. The youths' search for identity, freedom and community forms the framework for Weile Kjær's staging and curation.

The nostalgia of Weile Kjær's personal view of ARKEN's collection permeates the exhibition. Since his first visit to ARKEN at the age of 15, Weile Kjær has had a fondness for museum works such as Wolfgang Tillman's snapshots of fruit and cigarette butts, Micha Klein's computer-generated group portrait Crystal Powder from God and Henrik Plenge Jakobsen's fragmented body in the installation White Love. Art that depicts youth culture and identity, provokes with its straightforward and direct expressions, and imitates the cultural imagery of advertising and mass media.

“I want to communicate ARKEN's pictures in a new way. I think we should look at them again. Try to understand ourselves in them. Not as we were when they were created, but as we are today. To be able to look forwards.” — Esben Weile Kjær

Esben Weile Kjær created the sculpture BUTTERFLY! especially for the exhibition. It is a kind of mascot or logo that welcomes you with its pincers and giant eyes, and advertises the exhibition on posters and social media. Weile Kjær found inspiration for the sculpture in the visual culture of the 1990s, where the butterfly was a popular motif as a print on clothing and tattoos. The butterfly is a symbol of transformation, and it reminds Weile Kjær of his early youth. The large bronze sculpture is created from two key rings he owned as a teenager that depicted an eagle and a butterfly.

“The butterfly has always been a favourite of mine. This is undoubtedly because it is the product of a transformation. Changed, but still the same.” — Esben Weile Kjær

BUTTERFLY! is full of experiences for all the senses. The walls and floors of the exhibition are covered with the graffiti artwork Something Forever, Forever Something (2023), created by visual artist Mira Winding and her crew of graffiti artists. DJ and composer Courtesy (Najaaraq Nicoline Vestbirk), in collaboration with guitarist Jakob Madmoon Lamdahl, composed two soundscapes: The Study of Dance Music and The Study of Dance Music for Guitar to reinforce the melancholic mood of the exhibition spaces. Esben Weile Kjær elaborates on the story of the skatepark in his essay BUTTERFLY! printed on a poster that guests are invited to take home.

Esben Weile Kjær (b. 1992) graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2022. He also has a background as a DJ and holds a degree in music management from the Danish Rhythmic Music Conservatory. In his performances, installations and sculptures, he examines the identity formation of his own generation and the role of popular culture and technology in the experience of community and freedom.

Esben Weile Kjær has had several solo exhibitions, including at Kunstforeningen GL STRAND and Copenhagen Contemporary and has shown his works internationally at Museum Tinguely in Basel and Magic Stop in Lausanne, Switzerland. In 2022, he received the Carl Nielsen and Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen Legats Talent Award. Esben Weile Kjær was recently featured in the group exhibition Another Surrealism at Den Frie in Copenhagen, with the installation HYPER! at the BFI in Miami, and with his performance BURN at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. In 2024, he has a solo exhibition at Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg, Denmark.

Richard Billingham, Christian Boltanski, Peter Bonde, Anders Brinch, BURN OUT (Jes Brinch & Henrik Plenge Jakobsen), Nancy Burson, Sophie Calle, Claus Carstensen & Superflex, Courtesy (Najaaraq Nicoline Vestbirk) & Jacob Madmoon Lamdahl, Torben Christensen, Elmgreen & Dragset, Marlene Dumas, Erik A. Frandsen, Mads Gamdrup, Andreas Golder, Douglas Gordon & Jonathan Monk, Damien Hirst, Micha Klein, Peter Land, Jouko Lehtola, Sarah Lucas, Hermann Nitsch, Kirsten Ortwed, Henrik Plenge Jakobsen, Tal R, Torbjørn Rødland, Erik Steffensen, Hardy Strid, Lene Stæhr, Wolfgang Tillmans, Esben Weile Kjær, Emil Westman Hertz, Mira Winding & crew and Yan Lei.

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“It is dark, grim and beautiful when the artist Esben Weile Kjær acts as curator of Arken's permanent collection. The nostalgia for the 1990s suits the place perfectly.”

-- Politiken

“Suddenly art breathes, gets nerves and pulse.”

— Berlingske

“The omnipresent, personally participating curator gives the spectator a distinct right and opportunity to be inspired not to experience the works as the curator does, but to approach them from their own personal past experience and deeper present perception.”

— Weekendavisen

“Esben Weile Kjær holds up a mirror for a generation that has grown up with social media.”

— Wallpaper

“Here, at least, he stages the accelerated vulnerability of time, apathetic introverted sensual caring and particularly clubbed, yearning heavy-mindedness in a thrilling and wildly engaging way.”

— Informazioni

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ARKEN's exhibitions in 2023 are funded by
Augustinus Foundation