HUMLEBAEK, Denmark — Who owns a reminiscence? What’s a reminiscence? And do your reminiscences at all times belong to you? These questions hover within the air of Dollhouse, a retrospective of American artist Kaari Upson on the Louisiana Museum in Denmark, the primary of its variety following her dying in 2021 from most cancers at age 51. The exhibition is huge, taking on your complete south wing gallery. It’s diverse, with works spanning sculpture, portray, movie, set up, drawings, and extra. However above all, it exemplifies Upson’s prolific work ethic — nearly all of the featured items had been created within the 2010s — and her potent, playfully macabre sensibility. She had a really particular expertise for unsettling the home, injecting eeriness into the on a regular basis. The exhibition is offered as a staged dollhouse that guests can wander by means of, prompting them to query what of their expertise, if something, is actual.
The retrospective will not be chronological; becoming, given the time-twisting nature of Upson’s work. And as many works share similar titles, it’s troublesome, if not inconceivable, to find the true starting and ending of tasks, a few of which lasted years. As a substitute, it’s organized by theme: “When Kaari met Larry,” on the affect of a half-real, half-fictional man on her work; “The life of things,” on how objects can maintain tales; “Haunted by history,” stylized takes on her personal life; and “Endgame,” on Upson’s exploration of endings and dying.
Set up view of Kaari Upson: Dollhouse – A Retrospective
“Larry” is among the most pervasive characters in Upson’s oeuvre. Impressed by the remnants of an deserted home throughout the road from her childhood house, Upson started making work centering her imaginings of the resident’s Playboy life. Dollhouse options many items from this era, together with the large-scale set up “Recollection Hysteria”(2012), by which she recreated a room within the deserted home in dingy-colored latex from reminiscence, positioning mattresses, doorways, and different objects in a gravity-defining method. What needs to be on the ground is on the wall; what needs to be on the wall is on the ceiling. He additionally reveals up in “Kiss” (2008), by which Upson pressed still-wet painted portraits of herself and Larry collectively in several positions, and in untitled video works the place she dissects his dummy physique whereas dressed as a nurse, just like the phantom neighbor he was.
Different stirring components within the present are her collections of on a regular basis furnishings: A silicone mattress casts a peculiar iridescence in “X (King)” (2013); contorted sofas are each nightmarish and awe-inspiring in “Left Brace Erase, Back Brace Face” (2016); and the road of crutches manufactured from latex and pocked with dust and hair that make up “Cult of Individualism” (2012) blur fragility with beastliness. These are visceral, bodily works; one doesn’t simply view her work, they really feel it.
Two different large-scale installations play with innocence and its recollection in probably the most direct projection of Upson’s obsession with dollhouses. “There’s No Such Thing As Outside” (2017–19) options an empty, life-size house with home gadgets like tablets, dentures, and occasional tables at nighttime of the crawlspace beneath, highlighted solely by mild shining by means of the holes within the wood flooring above. A video of Upson and a childhood good friend enjoying children’ video games whereas distorted variations of their faces are forged over their closed eyes unfolds close by, their voices echoing and overlapping. In the meantime, “Mother’s Legs” (2018–19) is a forest of larger-than-life casts of Upson’s personal leg, swinging from the ceiling like butchered meat — as if to recommend that what appeared like a secure place to cover as a knee-height youngster was, in truth, no sanctuary.
Dollhouse is a really full exhibition, providing a number of entry factors to the most important themes of her oeuvre, and deeply unsettling in its have an effect on. Each ingredient of the present tasks the relatable worry that the world will not be the good place we wish it to be, regardless of how a lot we play faux. At all times lurking in her work is a way of dirty perfection. The viewers is a voyeur to the battle between lofty expectations, carried out belonging, and the grim actuality of what’s. Right here, in an idyllic little city that appears out over the calm waters of the Øresund Strait, museumgoers are invited to expertise an unraveling. This can be a type of clever play — one which reveals truths you won’t wish to find out about that which you thought you knew effectively. Is the way you keep in mind it actually the way it all was?
A dollhouse made by Kaari Upson’s mom, Karin Upson
Set up view of Kaari Upston, “The Grotto” (2008–9), blended media
Set up view of Kaari Upston, “Mother’s Legs” (2018–19), set up, 26 legs, urethane, paint, wooden
Kaari Upson: Dollhouse – A Retrospective continues on the Louisiana Museum of Artwork (Gammel Strandvej 13, 3050 Humlebæk, Denmark) by means of October 26, 2025. The exhibition was co-organized by the Louisiana Museum of Artwork, Kunsthalle Mannheim, and Masi Lugano. It can journey to Kunsthalle Mannheim in Mannheim, Germany, from February 13 to Could 31, 2026, and to Masi Lugano in Lugano, Switzerland, on dates to be introduced between 2026 and 2027. The exhibition was curated by Anders Kold.
