ABSTRACT
Undeterred by the constraints of the occupation, Helhesten’s reckoning with art and culture also involved social praxis. Artists partook in collaborative art making, working retreats, educational trips, raucous parties, and public and private art projects, while also exhibiting their work in solo and group shows. The Helhesten artists would hardly have characterized their installation by what describe as exhibition design or curation—theoretical concepts introduced by post-1960s art history. The exhibition’s fluid and informal installation was meant to encourage viewer interaction with and emphasize the aesthetic qualities of the works on display. Taken as a whole, the show’s 92 paintings and 32 sculptures were dominated by vibrant colors, organic materials, and playful subjects, underscoring humanistic, ludic, and carnivalesque themes that played off the exhibition’s culturally layered site. The exhibition can be seen as a condensed microcosm chronicling artists’ overtures to gestural abstraction that were built on their Surrealist-inspired techniques of the late 1930s.
