Existing Otherwise – Inner Jungle / Galerie Wedding

08.04. – 21.05. 

Exhibition by Irene Fernández Arcas

Curated by Solvej Helweg Ovesen

Within the framework of
Existing Otherwise | Anders Existieren 2021–22at Galerie Wedding
Artistic Direction: Solvej Helweg Ovesen

With her colourful and humorous paintings, ceramics, films and rituals, the artist provides an alternative mental and physical space out of the harsh urban jungle. The exhibition addresses people of all ages and offers a soft landing into spring, despite the turbulences that have been happening since winter. 

Irene Fernandéz Arcas describes the Inner Jungleas “a utopian inner safe space, a refuge, full of lights maybe, landscape memories, or simply an imaginary place. We can all create such inner spaces with very little tools – also children, there is for specific learning. If you create an inner jungle and go there, you can find whatever you want to find, such as peace or relaxation.” 

The altar is a vital design element in Fernández Arcas’s installations in general, and in the Inner Jungle in particular. Here, the exhibition space is transformed into a tangible soft space where there is room for both mourning and relief, or even a sense of bodily dissolution. There is an altar, not a religious one, but a site that holds a lot of beauty and healing energies. 

As much as painting and ceramics mean to her, for Irene Fernández Arcas, collaboration with others is the highest form of art. With the exhibition Inner Jungle, she is attempting to unfold a “Gesamtkunstwerk”, a total work of art, in cooperation with a number of co-creators and the team at Galerie Wedding. Various events will accompany the exhibition: Yoggaton at the opening, a guided tour by the artist and curator, a reading and ritual as well as flamenco for the Gallery Weekend, kids’ dance on the square in front of the town hall, and a concert at the finissage. Irene Fernández Arcas comments on the colourful, enveloping exhibition of paintings: “The spaces I create are materialisations of our inner jungle. They are spaces to exist otherwise, pure and in the moment.”

Photos: Juan Saez