What is it? A flying picket fence or a wild roller coaster? An abstract tutu or a sparkly, pink flower? Come and see ARKEN's major solo exhibition featuring sculptor Eva Steen Christensen. She plays with sculptural shapes and materials, while drawing you through to the other side of the familiar.

In this exhibition, you are invited to wander through a blue dream-garden full of picket fences, flowers and fountains, while a sea monster made from tights writhes high up under the ceiling. You can also crawl through a giant sculpture that occupies the space like an abstract body made from clothes and other textiles once worn by ordinary people. The sculpture is called Female Nude, and it carries a wealth of stories from everyone who helped create it. At the Ishøj By Center shopping centre, not far from ARKEN, Eva Steen Christensen ran a sewing studio where people were invited to donate clothes and help sew the strips for the sculpture.

Eva Steen Christensen (b. 1969) is one of Denmark's most important living sculptors. Her sculptures are dreamy, sensuous and thought-provoking. With playful ease and mathematical precision, she examines the familiar shapes, materials and ideas of everyday life. What you know is being turned upside down and reassembled to challenge your perception of the world.

This exhibition borrows its title from the myth of the sea monster Hydra, an image of female power and transformation. Hydra is also water — the life-giving substance that flows through the body and connects all living things. We are all connected to each other and to the world across time and place. As you wander through the garden of dreams, you may find that you become interwoven with the shapes and materials of the sculptures, revealing new sensations of the world.

The exhibition is funded by:

Dansk Tennis Fond
Furi Appel og Gunnar Niskers Fond til Almennyttige Formål
Grossers L. F. Foghts Fund
Politiken-Fonden
Solar Fonden af 1978
Danish Arts Foundation
Eva Steen Christensen — HYDRA
ARKEN's exhibitions in 2023 are supported by Augustinus Fonden