After a longer pause we are back with a fantastic conversation the artist Nathan Gulick, visiting town from LA for his solo show, Waiting Room, at C4 Projects. We met and had a live recording at C4, and it was both a lot of fun and very interesting. Nathan is eloquent and engaged, and we got a great podcast out of it. Please enjoy and be sure to check out the installation images from the exhibition.

And we are back! Thanks for hanging in there. Today we have a conversation we’ve been really excited to share with you, with the artist FOS, also known by his government name of Thomas Poulsen. This talk was recorded during the summer when he had a quite ambitious show up at Gallery Nils Stærk here in Copenhagen, and it turned out to be a really fun one. He is one of the guest who was both really easy and really interesting to speak with, and this is a great combination when you are talking about very engaging and expansive exhibition to begin with. We had a good long talk about many subjects, please enjoy.

One of the great things about making this show is the wide variation in experiences and interests we get to hear from the guests. After talking with Nanna last time, we have a completely different type of artist on the show today, with a very different kind of story. It’s nice, because as artists, you slowly start to realize that there isn’t a single way forward, or a rule, or a technique to“make it”. So in that spirit, we have Todd James on the show today. Todd is a really interesting artist, because he has been able to straddle so many different worlds throughout his career, and that is something a lot of people are afraid of doing, perhaps feeling that it would somehow dilute what they do, or confuse an audience. Todd doesn’t seem to have that fear. His credits are many, his skill plentiful, so let’s just get straight to our talk with him. Enjoy!

After a nice week of restructuring and thinking about the program, we are back and stronger than ever! We are joined today by the inquisitive and able artist Joachim Fleinert who is currently showing at the Hasselblad Center in Gothenberg, Sweden with an ambitious project. He is also currently showing during Riga Photo Month. He has recently returned to Copenhagen after a stint in both Sweden and England. Join us as we talk about moving away, coming home, building networks and the beauty of 100 year old images. And of course, we talk about his work.

We are introducing a topic for each episode from now on which will serve as a talking point and a conversation starter with the guests and hopefully guide us to a clearer understanding of the person in the armchair. The topic for today is Inclusion, which we used as an opportunity to bitch! Good times.

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The talented and understated Valérie Collart came by and sat in the armchair this week in order to tell us about her work. We also got to talking about the benefits and drawbacks to having a practice in Copenhagen, about how to know if an object is a sculpture or a photograph and about crying in front of a Rothko painting. It’s a great talk!

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This week we have master of talent and hard work on the show, John Copeland. He dropped by in order to share some of his wisdom about working methods, how to not go crazy from all the painting, and about developing style, exhibition by exhibition. His solo show is up now at V1 Gallery.

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We are very proud to bring you guys our first exploration into new waters with these conversations recorded live at the 1000 Books Art Book Festival here in Copenhagen. This a a new format for the show and like most newborns it's a little wobbly on it's feet, but quite endearing. We spoke with many different publishers of books about many subjects, learned about the current renaissance in art books, about the autonomy of creating your own content and made some new friends. Many thanks to those who took time to talk with us, and of course to the organizers of the festival. This is a special episode, so please enjoy and once again, please help us spread the word.

Links to all the publishers and more info at www.undergang.net

Episode number 25! We are a quarter century old in podcast years, and we are real happy about it. Today we have Mette Kit Jensen, a talented and uncompromising artist from Denmark, but educated in Germany. This gives her somewhat of an outsider's view of the Copenhagen art work, and we had a very interesting talk about that among many other things such as the accessibility of art, using an RV as an art piece and making your professors lie on the floor in order to see your work.

Gang, this week we are proud and honored to have Adam Jeppesen sit in the armchair. The talented thinker, traveler and photographer put up a heroic effort to come on the show, and we recorded this one over two parts, on in the basement of a cinema and the other at the Copenhagen airport. He's a champion, and you can hear it in his tales of epic modern day travels. It's a great talk, you can hear about growing up in two countries, working in exchange for free equipment and how being an undercover video journalist led to making quiet images on his own. Stellar talk.

Check Adam out at: www.adamjeppesen.com

Time marches forward and so does the show. This week we have an inspiring talk with the multi-talented Daisy Løvendahl. If you haven't heard about her, it's probably because she quit the art world some years back. But she still makes beautiful images. This is a really good one, and we tackle many tough subjects, so strap yourselves in and enjoy!

Hey peoples, we're back again with episode 22, featuring a fantastic chat with Asbjørn Skou. He is such an interesting person it was hard to stick to the subject of art but we just managed to pull it off. He talks about growing up with the activist DIY crowd, about critical engagement and answers the question; "why make art?" Oh, and about the identities of cities, reading science fiction and anarchy. Let's just say we talked about just about everything. Folks, this is a great one.

Welcome back to episode 21 featuring Ivan Andersen. We have a good talk about turning slacker-dom into an interest in art, the advantages of not trying to be an artist in New York and about not knowing your own secrets. His show opens this Friday at Gallery Bo Bjerggaard, and it is his best work yet. Check it.

Episode 20! We are kicking off this mini-milestone with a killer talk with Richard Colman. He was kind enough to sit down with us at V1 Gallery on the eve of his opening and talk some shit with us. We got to many subjects, including treating art school like a trade school, about why hard work is the most important thing of all and about finding the perfect shade of green.

Welcome back, and happy New Year to all! We have a great artist and incredibly sweet human on the show today; Nanna Debois Buhl. I have gotten to know her a bit over the last year or so and the more I hear about what she does, and how she does it, the more I fall in love with her work. It’s thoughtful, well-researched and also very tactile, which I find to be a rare combination today. Often it’s hard for artists to lean equally on research and material when creating projects, and it’s something I think a lot about it terms of my own work. And so those are the themes of the conversation today, and I think you’ll find it really interesting. She also currently has works up in two different exhibitions, check below for links to those and other cool stuff. She is open hearted and very generous in the way she talks about her process, so let’s get straight to it. Enjoy!

Hey gang, welcome to episode 19. Time flies eh? This week we have a great sit down with Artist Naja Maria Lundstrøm who is showing right now at Overgaden Institute for Contemporary Art. We hear about her strange start in her teenage years, about Denmark and the Danes, and about making political art work which isn't just the usual leftist drivel. Oh, and about building a gym in an art space. Go work out there!

Hello friends and welcome to another episode of our show! This week we talk with Ruth Campau and learn why growing up solo in the provinces is similar to working as a professional artist, about working in a private hospital in London and about finding the perfect personal working method. Afterwards, you can go check out her work on her website, or if you are here in Copenhagen, at Marianne Friis Gallery. Links below. Enjoy!

Hi gang, this week we got yet another good one for you, this time from a foreign land. The bright and talented Italian artist Marco Mazzoni was in town for his solo show at gallery B15 and he took the time to sit down with us and tell us about his vision. We learned about the ideas underpinning his latest works, about why artists shouldn't have websites, talked a little Italian politics and even heard an alternate take on the birth of the mafia. Sit down with us and get a rare insight into a quiet and thoughtful artist.

Plus, stick around until the end, we have a special surprise guest coming by the studio to tell us a little secret. Holler!

Today we have the pleasure of talking with Kevin Malcolm, an intelligent and driven Scottish artist living here in Copenhagen. We got to discuss critical theory and academic style art making, and we got to ask him some questions we've been meaning to get to. We also hear about growing up in Glasgow, the pitfalls of studying art, and about the importance of building a network of like-minded artists anywhere you might work. Join us for a smart talk about art, theory and practice. And if you are in CPH go see his show!

Photographer, traveler and printer Stig Stasig let us into his studio for a solid talk. We cover a lot of ground and hear about how left-wing politics led him from painting to photography, opened doors for him in communist Russia, and about how digital photography led him to start as a photo gravure printer. We also talked about how image making processes inform types of work, and about the need for tactility when making personal work. Hell, we even got on to the topic of the future of photography.  Tune in for a good one. If you are in CPH he is having a solo show at MOHS Exhibit this Friday the 14th, 2014. See hand made gravure prints from a master photographer!

More at www.undergang.net

The incredibly friendly and very talented artist Carl Krull invited us up to his tower studio and showed us his new drawings in preparation for his upcoming solo show this fall. We got to enjoy the view of both the city and the works (they look killer) and had a really nice talk. Along the way we heard about how a 3 month road trip can lead to an entirely new technique, how every artist should have 5 studios and about why it's good to go to art school in an entirely different country.

Asger Carlsen graces the armchair for episode 13, and let us tell you, this one is relevant for everyone interested in art. The key issue at hand is, if you want to find lasting, interesting work, then you need to investigate art. You need to engage and have a dialog with art, especially if you don't understand it the first time around. Talking with Asger about his work perfectly illustrated the need for this level of investigation, and we got a lot out it. Along the way we learn about how he got started as a crime-scene photographer, how he drifted to New York (and hasn't come back, yet...) and how he started making his unique images. Join us for another great episode.

Yep, that's right folks, the generous and engaged Jonathan Meese took a moment before the opening of his solo show at Gallery Bo Bjerggaard to hang out with us and have a talk. We got a couple of great ideas out of it as well as one of our truisms smashed. We didn't think that the genius artist who is discovered and brought forward into the light (if you call the current art system, warts and all, the light) existed anymore. But Jonathan is exactly that, and continues to live the "real" artist life, with most of his time in the studio, actually making work, not out self promoting. Jonathan is not a man without ideas and he shares generously with them. Join us for a compelling and interesting talk.

Hi Team,

We've been getting a lot of questions about who we are and what we do lately, so we've made a short episode this week in order to explain ourselves a little. Our friend Laura Palmer has graciously helped out by asking Ando a few questions about his life and about the undergang. This episode is for anybody who has been wondering who the hell is this guy, and what is this gang about? We'll be back next week with some really exciting new conversations, so in the meantime find us on twitter or write us a mail eh? holler@undergang.net.

We're blasting into 2014 with one of the best conversations yet. We met with gallery owner David Risley and asked the question: are Danes lazy? The answer affects all of us in the art world. We also manage to hear about his past in the Midlands, about going to art school and about sliding into curating shows more or less by accident. Go see the current show at his gallery, it's a clear bump up in thoughtfulness and quality over the usual fare. Up until Feb 2nd, 2014

Hello friends - we are tremendously proud to announce the launch of our new podcast network Cultural Bandwidth, as well as the new podcast we are blasting off with on the new network, By The Way: A Contemporary Art News Podcast. Cultural Bandwidth is the world's first podcasting network based around art, and we couldn't be happier to share this with you. There will be a lot of information about exactly what we are doing here in the new year, but in the meantime you can enjoy 6 episodes of BTW over the break, and we'll be back in January with brand new episodes of both The Undergang Armchair and BTW.

This week we got a lucky break and got to visit a talented artist who is in the middle of developing a new exhibition. Who you ask? Why it's Jacob Noel of course! We have a great talk about what it's like to try to quit being an artist (and fail), about process methods and about needing to constantly defend ones work. Folks, it's a good one.

We will be (sort of) of closed for the holidays, so the next conversation will be on Wednesday the 8th of January. But stay tuned for our holidays listening recommendations and survival guide!

This week we are graced with the presence of Sophie Dupont, and we have a really nice talk about her life and her art. We hear about her start as a dancer, her detour to art school, and how it has all led to exploring the wide world of performance art. Links and more on the undergang armchair website.

The Australian wunderkind graces us with his keen mind in the studios today. His capacity for thoughtfulness is indeed quite special, and we cover many topics like being an artist in Australia, intellectualism and recognizing the moment when he decided he wanted to be an artist. We'll miss you buddy!

Hello team undergang, we have a special guest this week: Thomas Øvlisen. He has a show opening this Friday the 29th of Nov, at V1 gallery. He was kind enough to sit down with us at the gallery after installing the show, and we got a good conversation out of it. We manage to cover a lot of topics including American art schools vs Danish art schools, why it's easier to get work done in Denmark and how to deal with a sudden drop in you seratonin levels. All this, and we talk a bunch about his work and about the show he is having. Have a listen to the episode, and we'll see you at the opening on Friday!

The talented painter and sculptor stops by the studio to tell us about his slow development into a professional artist, what he likes about working with people, and about how one must stay relevant in order to work professionally.

We managed to drag our good friend Jacob away from his insane work load and have a nice talk with him. He tells us about the process of finding out that he was a photographer and not a film maker, about how image making helped him be less shy, and about his 2 years in Greenland. And he makes fun of us. It's a good one.

One of the heavyweights of the danish art scene invites us in and drops some serious knowledge on everything from the southern jutland dialect to the dark years of danish art in the 70's. Claus is definite insider in the danish art scene, and a big thinker, so join us for a wide-ranging talk about his beginnings in both art and life, and his role as an intellectual in the danish art scene.

We meet up with the London based artist Charlie Woolley and talk to him about his early modeling career, his radio career and most of all his artistic career. Not bad for a young man of 32 years old.

For out first ever podcast our old friend Gus stops by and tells us a little about what it was like to move to Copenhagen, dealing with the weather and how his idea of what he does has changed over the years.

Greetings and salutations friends, nice to be back for another episode here. Things are cranking along here, you might have noticed that we have started to make some changes, especially on the website. But first, let’s talk about the guest today, Niels Pugholm. We were introduced to him through a captivating artist run space out in Valby, (an outer neighborhood of CPH) called KVADRAT16, and we sat down and talked right before he opened his show there. He a thoughtful, interesting artist who has been super active the last couple of years, popping up here and there with some wry and interesting shows. The only other news is really to ask you to excuse the mess while we build a new site. We are making some major changes to basically everything except this program, so stay tuned, we hope to unveil everything next week! In the meantime, please enjoy the talk with Niels Pugholm, and go check out his show at KVADRAT16!

Links:

Niels Pugholm | Instagram

KVADRAT16 | Instagram

A couple of weeks ago the National Gallery of Art (SMK) here in Copenhagen unveiled a bronze sculpture in front of the museum by Gillian Wearing called A Real Danish Family. This is also in conjunction with an exhibition of her works, they are both well worth seeing. We were lucky enough to have the chance to sit down with Gillian to talk both about the sculpture she made about this danish family, and about her work in general. You are indubitably familiar with her work, she is quite well known, both as a YBA - the young british artists, and for her work since. If you have a chance to see the show here at SMK then you definitely should, several of her works are much stronger in person, for example the self-portraits of her as her family are pretty breathtaking in person. Enjoy, and stay tuned for some big news next time around!

One of the great pleasures of making this show is having conversations with people who have some history behind them, people who have seen the ins and outs of the art world through many years, and to hear what is and is not important to them. The guest today is Jean Marc Bustamante, and he is a perfect example of the type of experienced artist and person we speak of. He of course has a long and storied art career, well worth looking into, but he also has a history as a teacher, and now as the director of École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, which is a prestigious art school in Paris. For those who are around CPH at the moment, he also has a show up at Gallery Susanne Ottesen, which functions as a retrospective of sorts, and is very much worth seeing. He is a wise and humorous man, so please enjoy our talk with him!

We are joined today by artist extraordinaire Malin Gabriella Norden, who was here in town for the CHART art fair, because the homies over at Steinsland Berliner gallery were showing some of her works. She was awesome to talk to, and she keeps the game of being an artist to it’s bare basics, and we mean that positively. There isn’t a lot of extraneous material around her work and practices, and it’s a pleasure to talk to the people who’s work is dictated by a relationship to their materials and their drive to move said work forward. These are practitioners who dedicate themselves to the process of making, and view their work in the long term. And to put it simply, it’s refreshing, and not at all a disadvantage.

We have the fantastic Zven Balslev on today, which has been a long time coming, and we ended up talking about many facets of the art world, having a practice, and about the kind of expectations-slash-priorities you might have. One of the great things about making this show is hearing diverse viewpoints on this mess of making art, and Zven’s view on it is great. It’s one you honestly don’t here often enough. You can currently see his work at Sydhavn Station and at Grafik Galleriet, as well as cop his book, Pulp Magma, links on the show notes page. Please enjoy our talk with Zven Balslev!

We are back again here on the other side of CHART Art Fair with our wrap up from the events this year. It’s a two part episode, with the first part featuring a short discussion with the panel of speakers from one of the Chart Art Talks, namely Peter Pakesch, chairman of the Maria Lassning Foundation, Shwetal Patel, director of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Sofia Hernández Chong Cuy, curator at the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (CPPC), Hans-Ulrich Obrist, artistic director at Serpentine Galleries, and editor of ArtReview magazine Mark Rappolt. The second part of the show is guested by Helga Christoffersen, curator at The New Museum, who curated an exhibition of emerging nordic artists for the fair, by the name of CHART Emerging. We personally had a great time, sneaking around in journalists clothes and chatting with about 10 thousand different folks. It’s also overwhelming at the end of the day, but we’re sure we’ll be fresh again by the time next year rolls around. Keep your fingers crossed! Thanks to all the folks appearing on the show, and of course thanks to CHART for the collaboration. Enjoy!

In honor of our new collaboration with the CHART Art Fair, we have special episode out today, featuring some of the founding galleries and the director of the fair. Through talking with them about the ideas behind the fair and some of the guiding principles, we’ve compiled an oral history of sorts as a warm up to the event, which opens here in Copenhagen on Friday the 1st of September. It’s the 5th anniversary of the fair, and it was tremendously interesting to hear from the folks behind it, and there were even a few surprises along the way. We’ll be doing a bunch of recording and meeting of folks, so say hi if you catch us there, and stay tuned for the next few weeks of programing from the fair.

The warm months have fully settled upon the land, and with every Danish summer comes the yearly tradition of Roskilde Festival, one of the world’s largest music festivals. Around 130,000 people attend the festival, which is run by a non-profit organization. For many years now they have also had a surprisingly ambitious art zone during the festival, with running themes and critical commentary on social and political issues. This year, for example they built four one-to-one replicas of the proposed wall types for the donald’s anti-cooties barrier between Mexico and the US. We spoke with the head curator, Mette Woller, and three of the exhibiting artists, Jillian Mayer, Oskar Koliander, and previous guest of the program, Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen. It was nice to see a large festival working on promoting critical and contemporary art, and we are already looking forward to next years program.

This episode is brought to you in collaboration with the Artland App. Please visit artlandapp.com for more information

Hello everybody, welcome back once again. We are back in the swing of things again here, and have a fantastic guest on the show today, Kenneth Balfelt. For those who don’t know, his practice is one which truly is social, and it’s really incredible. The level at which he engages with the world around him is inspiring to us not just as artists but as a humans. He’s our new superman. He works with marginalized groups, often in the public sphere, on a political, architectural and artistic level, and it’s often highly collaborative. But we’ll let him tell the story himself. Enjoy!

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Here we are, back again! How is everybody? We’ve been trotting about all summer, but are finally home in Copenhagen, and chomping at the bit to get going again. We have some new projects in the works, which we are excited to unveil for y’all in the coming months. But more importantly, we have Jesper Carlsen on the show today. His exhibition at Martin Asbæk Gallery unfortunately just came down, but we managed to grab him and hear about the show before it did. He has a diverse and forward thinking practice which utilizes many tools from the digital and technology worlds, and since we are big fans of the crossover between tech and art it was great to hear about his work. It’s current, it’s interesting and it’s engaging. So let’s get straight to it, enjoy our talk with Jesper Carlsen!

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Hello friends, we felt that we owed you another episode before we drift off to summer vacation here, so here we are. Today we have Peter Voss-Knude on the show, this was recorded live at Overgaden together with the director there, Marete Jankowski, who was also a guest on this program back in episode number 75. Overgaden is fantastic exhibition space, and you can see Peter’s show there, which is up until the 6th of August. We suggest you do that, because the show is quite engaging, and the premise for the show is really quite incredible. Peter has created an album of music as well, in collaboration with the Danish Army, please check the links below to hear that. After our talk we have included one of the tracks which is called Goodbye my Friend. Stick around and listen to that. Peter will also be performing the songs live here in Copenhagen on the 25th and the 31st of August, links for that are also below. We on summer vacation for about 4 weeks, but we’ll hit the ground running again in August. Until then, have a good summer, and enjoy!

We are back with our special 100th episode! It’s been over three years of this program, 100 guests, and a lot of ups and downs. We are thankful to each and every one of you, as well as to all the galleries who have been supportive along the way. Did we mention that Tal R is the special guest for the 100th episode? He needs no introduction right? He has a huge show up at Louisiana, and you should go see it if you haven’t. We talked about many things, including being in the entertainment industry, teaching, and many other topics, he is very generous in the way he talks about life and art. Also, come out this Sunday at 2pm and take part in a live podcast recording/artist talk with Peter Voss Knude at Overgaden. It should be fun. Enjoy our talk with Tal R!

We are talking adventure and exploration today with Klaus Thymann, a tremendously interesting fellow. He is a photographer, an artist, he founded a non-profit called Project Pressure, and an adventurer, so we invited him on the program because we figured he would have many compelling things to say, and indeed he did. We talked about a lot of themes which we personally find interesting, such as art in a greater social and global context, the development of projects, the role of ego in arts, etc etc. Thanks for being here, please check out Klaus’ website, there is a ton of cool stuff on there, and… we’ll see you next time for the 100th episode!

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Today we have a big one folks, we visited Supermarket Art Fair in Stockholm last month, and this is a compilation of our conversations with some of the many nice folks we met. It was a lot, there were lots of exhibitors, and as usual it’s really hard to figure out when is best to try to talk to people, and of course you try not to disturb them while they are working. Fairs are like that, overwhelming, fun, frustrating, interesting, all of it, so this reflects that in it’s own way. We had the pleasure of speaking to one of the founders of the fair and to a team member as well as quite a few exhibitors from the event. They will introduce themselves in the conversations, but we encourage you to follow up with the links for them below, because they are all doing great stuff. Enjoy and don’t forget to check those links!!

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Greetings friends, we’re here with a quick bonus episode before the Easter holiday. We were up in Stockholm recently to check out both the Market and Supermarket art fairs, and ended up meeting all sorts of cool people while we were there. For example, I met with two of my colleagues while I was there, Jenny Danielsson and Oscar Carlson, who have a Stockholm based podcast where they talk about art! It’s called Danielsson & Carlson, and I would encourage you to check that out. This recording is actually from when they invited me into their cool ass studio as a guest on their program, so we decided to do a swapcast from that talk. Be sure to check out their show if you understand Swedish, it’s quite good, and super professional! Link is below. The other person I had the pleasure of talking to was Johan Norling, who is the artistic director of Market Art Fair. He took time out of his busy schedule during the fair to talk to me for a few minutes, he turned out to be very interesting and open about what his job is like, its super fascinating. Enjoy, and have a great Easter holiday!

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Hello everybody, how are we looking out there? You guys feeling the beginning of Brexit, or just the warm breeze of spring knocking on the door? We have the talented Eva Stenram on the show today, who is a very interesting artist working mostly within photographic mediums. She is a swede living in London, and you’ve almost certainly seen her work before. It utilizes found imagery, but in a much tighter focus than some other found imagery work, and speaks to much about photographic representation, gaze and issues around women’s role in culture and society. But I’m going to let her tell the rest here, please enjoy my chat with Eva.

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