Light and Dark in ARoS, Aarhus, Denmark

Zagan the motorhome’s still alongside mothballed yachts, facing the Baltic Sea at Marselisborg Havn, a few km from the centre of Aarhus in Denmark (N56.13956, E10.21995). For reasons unknown (thanks to the gods), the leftover credit on the electricity supply here is failing to countdown, so we’ve freebie leccy. Also, the sun has opted to shine today, gleaming through the windows of the ARoS Kunstmuseum (art gallery) where we’ve spent a few fascinating hours. We’ve used the city’s free bikes (pop a 20 DKK coin into the bike, ride away, no cards, get coin back at end, perfect) to ride the couple of km to the edge of the city and back, and are now dead keen to get the bike rack back onto Zagan and a couple of old bikes plonked on it.

Motorhome Aire in the Marina at Marselisborg Havn, Aarhus

There are myriad ways to look at a thing. Anyone telling me that such and such is, for certain, a bad thing, or a good thing, probably hasn’t looked closely enough at it. Or they’ve an agenda they want to push, and getting me to agree is important to them. Either way, the closer I look at anything, the more complex it becomes, the less simple, the less obvious, the less straightforward. Life would be far simpler without having made this realisation, but hey ho, there you go.

An exhibit we got to see today. Look closely. It’s made up of plastic knives, forks and spoons

Another look at the same thing

Take the UK for example. Nick Danziger wrote about it in Danziger’s Britain, and chose to look for the absolute worst in the place. Same for Italy in the Dark Heart of Italy, and for Scandinavia in The Almost Nearly Perfect People. I can’t disagree that you could look at the world in this way, seeking out the grimier and more depressing elements to it, because the world’s not simple, nor is anything. But that said, I’ve made a conscious choice, some years ago, as did Ju, that we’d not look at the world in that way. We’d be aware of it, but we’d look for the good, the colour and the light. Right or wrong, we’ve opted to turn our gaze from the darkness, and we both hope this blog reflects our chosen outlook on life: we look to the good.

Where’s this all come from anyway? Well, partly recent musings on the meaning of life as this tour comes to an end (is there such a thing as ‘a tour’ and ‘an end’ for us any more?), and partly the modern art gallery we’ve been to today – the ARoS – which did an incredible job at throwing the dark and light into wonderfully sharp contrast. Even the building itself is intended to mirror the journey from hell to heaven described in Dante’s 700 year old Divine Comedy. The ground floor’s pitch dark in places, with exhibits deliberately poorly lit you can’t get your bearings, while the top floor is like walking the warm curves of a radiant rainbow. In this way the building’s pure white steps lift you up from hell to heaven.

Darkness in Hell, Ground Floor

Brilliance in Heaven, Your Rainbow Panorama, Top Floor

But hey, enough of the heavy. The gallery was an unknown to us before we went. In three years of solid wandering, we’ve not hit too many art galleries as we’ve not been naturally drawn to them. The ARoS sounded interesting though, and we needed a change of scene, so in we went. Did we enjoy it? Hell yes. I recall reading something before we went to the Uffizi in Florence (one of the few other galleries we’ve been to): you don’t have to like everything in there: even if only one of the thousands of pieces reaches out and touches you, has a deep meaning for you, then the place has worked. This bit of realistic advice worked well for us today, as we experienced a wide range of reactions to what we saw, from nothing to joy to intrigue to shock to wonder.

Ju’s favourite exhibit was ‘Boy’. All 500kg of him looked alive, brooding and, unsurprisingly, imposing!

Boy’s Feet – incredibly real

My favourite was The Bride, a huge chandelier which hangs low from the ceiling. The best part of it for me wasn’t the thing itself, but watching people’s reactions to it as they walked in, especially the men.

The Bride

You see, the whole thing was made of tampons. Even here in Scandinavia, where folks are even more guarded in their reactions than us Brits, emotions quickly played out on faces when the realisation was made. Ladies would smile, while men would either pretend to be above it all (me), or let our nervous laughter. Some folks just spun round and walked straight out.

The Bride – close up

As I’m writing this post, I’m giving myself a second favourite too (wahahahahhaha, evil laughter). Surroundings by Olafur Eliasson (the same chap who designed the glass roof walkway) was a clever walk-in device using the old favourite of mirrors facing each other to give the illusion of infinity. It worked magnificently, invoking more disorientation than a four pack of Lidl Strong Lager.

Surroundings

There were stacks of other, more thought-provoking exhibits in there too, all of which are best experienced by you. I’ve popped in a few photos and thoughts below, but as with anything, everyone sees everything in different ways.

First intrigue at the ticket desk: is she real or not?

This was a shock to me: a brand new sportscar scratched to high hell by us punters. A sign stated the author thinks it’s been scratched enough, so I had to pop my keys back in my pocket

The fallen sign was intended to reflect the variation between expectations of immigrants to the US, and what they found when they got there

Call centre gun? Whenever I find out I’m going to have to call a contact centre, this exhibit makes a LOT of sense

A comment on gender stereotypes imposed on us all from a young age

It’s not all modern in there – a depiction of a cavalry shirmish near to Aarhus

Private joke in here between me and Ju’s father Malcolm…

The smooth white lines of the museum were filled with the Valkyrie Ran, who’s symbology was lost of me, but it looked wonderful

As we stood on the roof we noticed a huge fire in the distance. Later on fire engines blared through the streets

The image through the window is a real one – taken in the US south where a man was being attacked for not being white. This one had me shivering

Boats from North Africa, wrecked on an island south of Sicily. We once stayed in a place on Sicily where the entire town had covered up the shipwreck deaths of hundreds of people, to avoid their fishing being stopped, which would have starved them. I stared at these pictures for a good while

Signs bought from beggars. Many of them looked familiar

Everything’s thrown at these two – including a piano on the head – and they keep going. Believe it or not, this is a comment on the strength of love

Wow! these are all bank that have gone under between 2008 and 2010. The commentary on this was about how capitalism goes through boom and bust cycles – not massively surprising but the sheer number of bust banks was incredible

One of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photos, a chap who wanted to get his point across through shock. Naked images of children and some pretty graphic sexual photos shocked me alright!

At the end of Robert’s exhibition you could dress up and pose on a photo set. The gear here should give you an idea of what to do…

Irons shaped as slowly-opening lotus flowers. I just loved this for what it looked like alone

Same for this one – a high heel made from kitchen pans

This is a helicopter covered in feathers. The artist’s reasoning for this is hugely contrived, surely only he could expect anyone to understand it without reading what it’s supposed to be…?

Zagan needs a new rear light cluster. Had a good look here but couldn’t see a match

And there you go! We nipped into a street food place on the way home for a bite to eat, which looked a bit nothing from the outside, as it’s only been open 2 months, but inside it was a large warehouse full of street food carts and bars in shipping containers. We opted for duck fat chips and Caribbean Jerk pork – oh yeah. We’d recommend it to anyone though – not cheap – but then this is Scandinavia! I’ll finish off with photos from the roof of the ARoS – which was a simply superb place to be.

Free city bikes? We thank you Aarhus!

Show off. :-)

Street food, Denmark style!

Right, that’s it. Ah yes, just those last colourful shots of heaven. Here you go. Cheers, Jay

Brilliance in Heaven, Your Rainbow Panorama, Top Floor