Frederik Exner
Frederik Exner is participating in “Young Contemporary Art,” Track 2: Site-Specific Integration into the Landscape, and will create a work that engages in dialogue with the forest landscape. He studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and has exhibited at Tranen, Augstiana Kunsthal, and several other venues across Europe, among other places, and has received the Talent Award from the Carl Nielsen and Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen Foundation.
Exner creates sculptures and reliefs that straddle the line between figuration and symbolism, drawing inspiration from sources such as religious art and cultural history in various parts of the world. In terms of form, his works may resemble historical applied arts, such as architecture, church art, furniture, or household utensils.
His imaginative universe features both creatures and more abstract elements, such as large round discs that accompany the hybrid animal figures and bring to mind universal symbols of the sun or halos. The combination of cultural-historical elements, figurative imagery, and symbols allows the imagination to wander in new directions and wonder where these figures might come from: a foreign visual culture, a fictional mythology populated by hybrid creatures, or a secret society among the animals? Exner, for example, has developed his own visual culture centered on frogs, which culminated in his solo exhibition *Gnomon* at the Tranen exhibition space in Hellerup in 2025.
In Exner’s creative process, his works take their cue from and interact with the space in which they are exhibited. Here at Deep Forest Art Land, Exner will be working with repetitions of a sculpture that rises from the forest floor in a straight line between the twists and turns of the trail. Stay tuned here on this page, on the construction sign in the forest, and on our Facebook or Instagram to see how the project takes shape.
Track 2 of "Young Contemporary Art" is supported by the Louis Hansen Foundation.
Photo credits - banner: Frederik Exner (work no. 1). David Stjernholm (works nos. 2, 5, 6). Flora Aussant (studio photo). Nikolaj Exner Carstens (portrait).
