Helium, Odsherreds Kunstmuseum 17.2-8.12. 2024

Landscapes. Plantlife. People and animals present in the scenery. These are all well-known motifs that have engaged artists through the years.

In the exhibition helium, Mette Vangsgaard highlights how nature and humankind continue to be inextricably linked in a state of perpetual transformation. Rather than traditional landscapes and flower motifs, we meet people, wildlife and plantlife coexisiting in an erratic present characterized by instability. The exhibition is based on Vangsgaard's investigation of how processes of change and unpredictablility affect us as humans.

The motif is modern rural life, composed of wildlife, plantlife and scenes from the everyday – based, in part, on Vangsgaard's own childhood, growing up in the Zealand countryside of Denmark. In her artistic practice, elements of humor and the absurd often coexist with underlying elements of social realism.

Helium is derived from the Greek name for the sun and the sun god, Helios. The title of the exhibition refers not only to, the Sun Chariot, the famous Bronze Age artefact from Odsherred, but also to the instability of helium as a chemical element. An instability that characterizes the times in which we live.