GIGA ORGANISM Vol. 2

Nordskoven

In 2014, Bank & Rau were given permission to install three concrete sculptures—Giga Grasp, Giga Flex, and Giga Make Up—at Deep Forest Art Land. They remained there until 2020, when the artist duo returned to continue working on the piece.

The artists themselves write about the work:
In the provincial town: The sculptures were originally created for an art festival in a larger provincial town on Zealand, where they were exhibited in the old town district, amidst hot dog stands, park benches, fluttering advertising flags, historicist fountains, and directional street signs. While installing the works, we were met with a predominantly irritable group of residents who were at their limit of what they could tolerate in their everyday urban environment. In our own opinion, the works did not function as well as intended.
One of the obvious reasons was that we had failed to take the location seriously, and had nonchalantly simply delivered works created in the wake of a previous work (Organism Vol. 1), designed for a space entirely different from the urban environment—a different universe. Furthermore, the scale was completely off. The provincial town would not engage with our gigantic structures, which evoke both grandeur and decay. The gigantic structures were simply in the way.

In the gallery: “Organism” is a collective term we use for works in which we explore, through the body, what a sculpture is—and perhaps, through that process, discover what a body is. And this is where scale and the projection of narrative—and thus context—come into play. In the first work, *Organism Vol. 1*, one could say that the installation as a whole stimulates the body, and that the sculptures—limbs and organs—are on a scale reminiscent of the human body. Small enough to be carried in one’s arms like a small child. The installation unfolded within a white cube and, as a whole, created a setting that could be walked through, thereby drawing the visitors into it—as bodies within the body—for an intimate encounter with the works.

In the forest: We’ve now tried our hand at Skovsnogens Skov. The forest space is perhaps closer to an exhibition space than to an urban space—in the sense that there’s nothing for you to do there! And in *Organism*, this has proven necessary for the narrative to unfold. We’re letting Giga Organism Vol. 2 unfold here, among majestic tree trunks, allowing the sculptures to realize their monumental potential in a wild, untamed environment, subject to the whims of the seasons. We’ve added three new sculptures to the work in the forest, right on site. This work on a GIGA scale projects us into an almost universal bodily state, offering fleeting glimpses of unknown dimensions and a timeless sense of catastrophes that have occurred—or that might yet occur—in which humanity is so small, so small.