Exhibition | Lin Utzon: Cosmic Dance at Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature in Paris

Lin Utzon, an artist based out of Mallorca and Hellebæk, Denmark, recently finished up an exhibition at the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature in Paris, which tackled the quiet grandiosity of the far north. Cosmic Dance showed from April 29 to Sept. 14 and featured 350 drawings, paintings, photographs and ceramic sculptures.

The artist says of her inspiration: “I feel a great peace of mind by being in nature. I am fascinated by the fact that everything comes from the same sources, namely the universe or God. With my work Cosmic Dance I try to uncover the essence of nature and to show the coherence of everything.”

The art blog Hyperallergic opined on the exhibition, contrasting it against the setting of a museum in which artists have done things like create a talking boar head or lived inside a stuffed bear for 13 days. Not surprisingly, Utzon’s quieter works feel dwarfed by the relative strangeness of the museum. They do, however, succeed in creating the sense of a vast, freezing expanse in the mind of critic Allison Meier.

“This is partly the monochromatic nature of the sculptural work and the repetitiveness of its forms, which makes it feel a bit muted, especially in the gallery portion where it’s away from the more playful permanent installations (French artist Nicolas Darrot’s talking boar head installed among the mounted heads, for example).

Utzon explains that she is inspired by the North with its arctic stillness for her pieces, which have towering, twisting forms in the courtyard and congregated spheres like a cloud alongside the taxidermy, all in black and white. Nevertheless, despite the feeling of a snowy whiteout with the palette, it is always enjoyable to see the museum bringing in these experiments into its ornamented space. There’s a primordialism to Utzon’s best work that contrasts strikingly to the hunting lodge feel of the place, like an alien grip from the forgotten murky wildness of nature outside of human’s control. And even if every one of the 350 pieces (quite the quiet multitude) doesn’t linger as strongly as the space they’re installed in, there is this breath of primal cold.”

Meier’s installation photographs of the exhibition follow. In them you can see Utzon’s monolithic, austere structures contrasted against the museum’s stuffed animals and paintings.

Above image: Installation view of Lin Utzon’s Cosmic Dance at Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature in Paris. Photograph by Allison Meier.

Any thoughts about this post? Share yours in the comment box below.