Hold your horses

The exhibition has a cultural-historical focus and is presented as visual documentary material, accompanied by captions about works and artists. The more than a hundred photographs reproduce all kinds of artistic sculptural depictions of the horse in Denmark, from the Middle Ages to our own time. The photographers are Martha Velásques, Copenhagen. and Chr. Heilskov Rasmussen, Mexico.

Ethnographer Chr. Heilskov Rasmussen is also the curator of the exhibition, and works with the Art Centre Silkeborg Bad to publish the book "The petrified horses" on the same subject in parallel. Exhibition and book bring together the diversity of typical bronze and stone horses as they are depicted in the sculptural Danish art. These are photos of about 80 artists' works from the Middle Ages to the present day. Here you meet the horse as the wild animal, the domesticated domestic animal, the farmer's work tool, as a metaphor for gods and art, and when it is included in classic power and tribute monuments such as equestrian statues etc.

In parallel with the art-historical material, five contemporary sculptors will create new sculptural works in the park or inside the cultural-historical exhibition.
This part of the exhibition is a Sculpture Experiment Silkeborg - a flexible exhibition format that Art Centre Silkeborg Bad first launched in 2016, repeated in 2017 and 2019, and which means that sculptors are encouraged to work more freely and with untraditional materials, as they work as most often created are temporary and context-specific.

In January, the following sculptors were selected by a jury for participation this year:

Jørn Hansen (project: "Klodshans - paraphrase of the equestrian statue")

Freja Niemann Lundrup (project "Installation about the horse and the monument)

Frank Fenriz (project "People's Ignorance, My Strength")

Lars Waldemar (project "Wooden horse")

Trine Fenger Gold (project "Cheval Natural / so the horse got free")

Søren Lyngbye (project "Paraphrase of the Sun Horse").

The individual works are realized indoors or in the Sculpture Park during the months of May and June, respectively.

Overall, "Pat the horse" makes a classic art motif visible which is extinct in contemporary art and largely also in society. Pat the horse and SES shows that sculpture today is many things and puts a spotlight on discussions about the monument as communication and on the use of animal metaphors.

Pat the horse and Sculpture Experiment Silkeborg can be experienced at Art Centre Silkeborg Bad in the period 29 May - 19 September 2021.