Montana and the Gallery
“Art enriches, provides energy and creates freedom...–Montana and I are therefore indebted to it, as it helps me to see and understand. It exhibits, debates, rejects, enrages, and delights.” (Peter Lassen)
Art requires thinking outside the box. Enraging and delighting its audience is precisely what are should do. This is a view that Montana’s founder Peter Lassen and the National Gallery of Denmark share.
The café at the National Gallery of Denmark is sponsored by Montana
The café at the National Gallery of Denmark is located in the white building with a beautiful view over the Østre Anlæg park and offers a blend of art and design, where Montana Furniture A/S since 2010 has supported with unconventional furniture and exciting creativity.
Exhibitions supported by Montana
Montana and its founder Peter Lassen find much inspiration in experimental art, where frameworks are there to be broken, and expectations are meant to be exceeded. In keeping with this philosophy, Montana is supporting a series of exhibitions at the National Gallery of Denmark. In 2010, together with other foundations and sponsors, Montana is contributing to the extensive exhibitions Bjørn Nørgaard. Re-modelling the World and Bob Dylan.The Brazil Series.
Bob Dylan. The Brazil Series
Bob Dylan has always worked on other projects concurrently with his music. Since the 1960s he has, among other things, worked with pictorial art. A number of album covers and small-scale exhibitions have been visible signs of Dylan’s early work as a visual artist. According to Dylan, an artist must always be moving and changing, and so an oscillation between different modes of expression strikes him as entirely natural.
Dylan has recorded his impressions and thoughts while travelling in Brazil, capturing people, events, and places in a plethora of sketches. Back in the US, some of these many scraps of paper served as the basis of The Brazil Series. In his paintings Dylan demonstrates his phenomenal powers of observation. He uses his images to tell us stories that range from the everyday and descriptive to the violently dramatic, incorporating strong elements of fiction. The stories from Brazil flow out to reach us from the cracks opened by the artist; each fragment adding another aspect to the overall journey, Dylan invites us to take.
With the support from Montana the guests at The National Gallery of Denmark have a unique opportunity to explore another facet of the artist Bob Dylan. The exhibition The Brazil Series presents 40 all-new, never-before-seen paintings created by Bob Dylan specifically for this exhibition
Bjørn Nørgaard. Re-modelling the World
Bjørn Nørgaard is an uncompromising artist who has been leaving his remarkable signature and influence on Danish art since the 1960s. As part of the experimental art scene, he radically and provocatively challenged conceptions about art and its relationship to institutions and reality.
For the first time, in 2010 the National Gallery of Denmark gave the public the chance to experience a collective profile of Bjørn Nørgaard’s multifaceted art works from the 1960s through to today. And it is largely thanks to Montana and others that the Gallery was able to present this unique retrospective of sculpture, installations, actions, film and graphics.
Jeppe Hein: invisible labyrinth
In the spirit of Gyro Gearloose, Jeppe Hein created an invisible labyrinth in the X-room at the National Gallery of Denmark in 2006 with support from Montana. Visitors were equipped with digital headphones, which would vibrate via infrared beams when the wearer struck the virtual wall of the labyrinth. The exhibition was at once a minimalistic and spectacular playground. This made it possible to break with prevailing rituals and conditions for exhibition space, the public and works of art.
The labyrinths in the X-room changed from one day to the next, which made the exhibition attractive to visit several times. There were a total of six different variations, all referring to authentic labyrinths down through the history of art. From the famous medieval labyrinth in Chartres, through Stanley Kubrick’s fateful maze in The Shining to the video game Pac-Man.
The Flying Steamroller
A 12-ton steamroller. Secured by the National Gallery of Denmark in 2008 thanks to financial support from Montana, this work of art adorned the Gallery’s front square for an extended period of time.
The Flying Steamroller by American artist Chris Burdens is not a work you could easily miss: The monumental sculpture consists of a 12-ton steamroller attached to a steel arm with an enormous counterweight in the form of concrete blocks.
The work is a combination of a sculpture and a performance, as every half hour it is manned by an operator, who climbs up on the steamroller and starts it. It then drives around in a circle until the steam roller reaches top speed, whereupon it defies its weight and lifts off the ground. The steamroller continues to travel in a circle for a few minutes until it slowly loses speed and height and comes back to land on the ground again. Once the steamroller is completely still, the operator dismounts and only returns when the performance is ready to start again.
