The collection

Do you know the feeling of losing your footing? Of how hard it can be to feel at home? Karolin Schwab's floating house stands in the middle of the lagoon that surrounds ARKEN. The house has no walls or furniture. The roof is the sky, and the floor is the flowing water. Nothing stands still. It is up to you, your imagination and the surrounding landscape to fill the empty house with meaning. In a world in constant movement, how do you stand firm on shaky ground?

A fountain is a beautiful, cool oasis in a lush garden. The pinnacle of beauty and rejuvenation. Can you think of a more refined interpretation of nature's life-giving spring? At ARKEN, the water trickles merrily from a bountiful bouquet of glass breasts in pinks and browns, flowing into the fountain's basin surrounded by lush green plants. The female body - symbol of the forces of nature and fertility - is transformed into a surreal, suckling fantasy creature in its own ecosystem.

Butterflies are associated with beauty, transformation and rebirth. But take a closer look at their beautiful wings. Suddenly, images emerge from historical events: the 1973 coup d'état in Chile, the student uprising in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989, and the terrorist attacks in New York in 2001. All 68 butterflies in the series are linked to political events that have taken place where each species lives. What is beautiful at first glance becomes gruesome. A transformation has taken place.

Refugee by accident. Mona Hatoum was born in Beirut, Lebanon. In 1975, as a young woman, she travelled on holiday to London. But civil war broke out and suddenly she couldn't return home. She was cut off from home — symbolized by a kitchen, the traditional domain of women. But in Hatoum's kitchen, danger and conflict lurk. The floor is covered with graters and herb choppers like sharp, electrified creepy crawlies. Take care you don't get shocked.

Play for life! A boy on a rocking horse welcomes you to ARKEN, beckoning you into the ARKEN's forecourt. Six feet tall and cast in bronze, like a genuine equestrian statue. Only Elmgreen & Dragset's equestrian statue would rather celebrate play and imagination than victory and power in war. It is a witty and sharp critique of society's power structures by the Danish-Norwegian artist duo.

Through her self-portraits, Sarah Lucas challenges sexual stereotypes and gender representations. She deliberately portrays herself as a hermaphrodite, wearing big boots, jeans and a T-shirt, and she poses more as a man than as a woman. In Got a Salmon on in The Street #3, Lucas stands on a street, holding up a large photograph of a naked man's lower body. The man is covering his crotch with a squirting can of beer, which he is in the process of opening. The work's ambiguous title illustrates Lucas' penchant for visual jokes. “Salmon” is English slang for the woman's sex, while “got a salmon on” is a paraphrase of “got a hard-on” referring to a man's erection. The title is therefore a juxtaposition of male and female sexuality — exactly like the person on the street who appears as a mixture of male and female. Got a Salmon on in The Street #3 is a critique of a joke, but is also a witty comment in itself. Lucas brilliantly mixes the witty, the sarcastic, the sexual and the inappropriate in her portrayal of an alternative female identity.

The jumble of cables and tech, sound and smoke hides a broader context: in reality, this work presents two versions of the same composition. The original composition consists of sound fragments from vinyl records, which the artists have cut up and reassembled in new constellations. In this way, the composition incorporates an extensive remix of sound from various eras and genres of music such as opera, German schlager and classical music and even disturbing sounds taken from horror films. The new composition is subsequently transcribed onto sheet music and recorded by an ensemble. In the video collage shown in connection with the installation, the performing musicians alternately step in and out of the picture. With precision and timing, the two versions of the composition play synchronously, while the installation's wealth of hi-fi equipment, video sequences and sculptural setups both play and visualise the composition, inviting the guest to move around and experience the installation's movement, light and sound systems. The contrasting transformation from the original composition of cut-up records to the instrumental recording is evident. At the same time, the two versions complement each other in the exhibition, where the two soundtracks can be followed in parallel. The title of the work reflects the artists' reuse of older vinyl records. In THE MAGIC OF the artists have borrowed from an album by English organist Reginald Dixon: The Magic of Reginald Dixon (Organ Favourites From “Mr. Blackpool”), from which the artists also extract sounds.

Wolfgang Tillmans maintains the fleeting moments in his highly personal and vulnerable photographs. The German photographer has portrayed famous musicians and cultural personalities, depicted the nightlife of the club scene and shot fashion campaigns. But he also documents his life as though his images were a diary. Intimate photos of his friends, fruit and cigarette butts on a windowsill, flowers and landscapes. Everything is equally significant, and everything has potential when Tillmans aims his camera lens at it. By allowing the motifs to speak for themselves, Tillmans encourages us to understand his images on a personal level. Fruit on a windowsill can call to mind art history's classic, lavish displays of perishable fruit and flowers that remind us how beautiful and ephemeral life is. Tillmans' motifs are humble, but they share the same sensibility. A raw and romantic approach to an everyday scenario from a kitchen windowsill, without it being elevated to more than it is.

In the work “Top Suite”, we see the artist posing in a white cloth, photographed from the front and back, respectively. On her head, she holds a triangular shape that hides her face like a giant hat, marking a game of visibility and invisibility. At the same time, the triangular shape transforms the artist's body into an anonymous sculpture calling to mind the goddess statues of antiquity. The contrasts between the living body, the frozen action and the unidentifiable object accentuate the work's mystique.

Life is a journey from birth to death. Each passenger travels with his or her own suitcase full of cultural heirlooms, consumption habits and human experiences. If you had to draw your life as a journey, what and who would be drawn on your map? What has shaped you into who you are today? In this tapestry, the little schoolgirl with plaits and a Christ-like doll, the young man, the Madonna with the Chanel bag - not the baby Jesus - and the aging clerk with the briefcase appear as images of the various stages of life. But they are also people like you and me, dressed in and surrounded by things, symbols and trademarks that speak about gender and identity. Only the newborn and the dead are naked.