LAURBERG HOLDS A LUNAR
METEORITE OUTSIDE
THE MUSEUM, WHICH FACES
THE ØRESUND STRAITtime it has gone beyond our planet. And it
makes perfect sense, since, as Laurberg says,
‘the moon is the first object of wonder in
the night sky; the first step to the cosmos’.
‘The Moon’ takes up the entire south wing
of the museum. The first piece on view is
Katie Paterson’s 2007 work, Earth-Moon-Earth,
an automated grand piano performing the
‘Moonlight Sonata’. Except the artist had
translated Beethoven’s original score into
Morse code and sent it to the moon, where
the signals were fragmented by the rocky
surface. The piano only plays the bits that
bounced back to Earth, its intermittent
silences suggesting mankind’s continuous
quest to learn more about the moon.
From there, the exhibition is arranged
thematically, with rooms dedicated to
moonlight, moon-mapping, the Space Age,
and the colonisation of space. Most of the
works are on loan: a Sputnik has travelled
from London’s Science Museum; there’s
a lunar glove from the Smithsonian; a Donato
Creti from the Vatican; even the manuscript
of Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius, from the
National Central Library of Florence.
What impresses, though, is not the show’s
dizzying scope but, rather, the ingenious
juxtapositions across time and genres. So
older nightscapes by Caspar David Friedrich
and Joseph Wright of Derby are shown with
the photographs of Darren Almond, who uses
long exposures to shoot under moonlight.
Georges Méliès’ 1902 film, A Trip to the Moon,
is shown alongside Camille Henrot’s October
2015 Horoscope, an installation using the
zoetrope technology favoured by Méliès and
including resin moon figures. And relics of the
Apollo missions are joined by the work ofNanna Debois Buhl, a Danish artist who shot
their core rope memory – an early, analogue
system of coding via wires and magnets. ‘She’s
investigating the material foundations behind
the missions, and honouring the women who
wove binary codes in copper threads,’ says
Laurberg, who commissioned the piece.
Another commission, by American artist
Laurie Anderson, takes on more current
concerns. ‘She’s creating new constellations
based on things she feels we’re losing, such
as democracy and freedom. When you put on
the VR mask, you can visit different sides of
the moon and reflect on ideas of colonisation.’
The concluding section, where you will
find the Rothko, explores how the moon has
been used as a device to highlight the fragility
of our existence. As the final piece, Laurberg
selected video artist Rachel Rose’s Everything
and More, in which US astronaut David Wolf
recounts the disorientation he experienced
on returning from space. ‘He feels like his life
has been destroyed,’ says Laurberg. ‘It’s a
reminder that there’s only one Planet Earth.
And we need to inhabit it in a conscious way.’
Over the five-month run of the exhibition,
the museum is hosting ‘Full Moon Evenings’,
where visitors to the sculpture park can peer
at the moon through a telescope. There will
also be lectures by astrophysicists and art
historians, as well as performances by young
artists, all set to broaden your horizons. But it
will encourage introspection, too. As Tøjner
says, ‘by approaching something distant from
your life and yourself, you might suddenly
get closer to elements of what you are’. ∂
‘The Moon: From Inner Worlds to Outer Space’,
13 September 2018 – 20 January 2019, Louisiana
Museum of Modern Art, Denmark, louisiana.dkLUNAR MISSIONThree of the 216 moon-related artworks
and artefacts on display at the Louisiana
Museum of Modern Art in HumlebækLUNE II, BY YVES KLEIN
Part of the artist’s Pink Planetary Relief
series, Klein’s Lune II depicts the moon’s
surface in luminous pigment; it created a
sensation when it was first shown in 1961MOON ROCK BOX, BY TOM SACHS
Sachs’ 2008 Moon Rock Box: Helpers in Need
is an installation featuring 14 rocks, each
inscribed with the name of a medieval saint
offering protection against diseaseFILM, BY CHARLES AND RAY EAMES
This still is taken from the Eameses’ 1968
Rough Sketch for a Proposed Film Dealing with
the Powers of Ten and the Relative Size of Things
in the Universe, which used exponentially
zoomed-out visuals to convey the relative
sizes of man and the cosmosPhotography: © Tom Sachs, courtesy Sperone Westwater, New York. © Yves Klein Estate, ADAGP, Paris / DACS, London, 2018. © 2018Eames Office LCC190 ∑
Art