Artists

Henrik Godsk

Press release

Henrik Godsk (b. 1975 in Hjørring, DK) presents his fourth solo exhibition, Carnivalesque, at Ruttkowski;68 in Düsseldorf. The exhibition is comprised of new paintings, installations and sculptural objects that were all made for the space in Dūsseldorf. The title of the exhibition refers to the thinker and theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, who in his literary and cultural studies used the medieval carnival as a metaphor for what he called “the Carnivalesque”. “The Carnivalesque” can be described as a ritualistic spectacle where traditional ideas, hierarchies and power structures are suspended, so that a coexistence of different social registers and cultural expressions arises. Henrik Godsk, who is a seventh generation traveller and is part of the Scandinavian traveller- and circus-family Hertzberg, began decorating fairground facades from a very early age. The folkloric aesthetics from his founding years are still present in his work, which also contains a wide range of art historical references, ranging from Renaissance and Baroque court painting to modernism. In “Carnivalesque”, these aesthetic expressions are brought together in an exhibition, which presents new paintings, objects and sculptural installations that all relate to each other.