Artists have turned the Havneholmen metro station upside down
The Danish Arts Foundation has selected the five artists who have created the art for the five metro stations.
The artworks were created for each station, but have a common theme that reflects on time and space, geology and water. The project has received financial support from the Obel Family Foundation, the Villum Foundation and the Danish Arts Foundation.
If you look up as you make your way down the escalators at Havneholmen, you might get a little dizzy. The usual metro station fixtures and fittings such as information screens, benches, rubbish bins and travel card stands hang from the ceiling and protrude from the walls.
‘We imagined the Metroselskabet increasing the speed of the trains so that you actually start travelling at the speed of light. And travelling at that speed changes the space in the stations,’ explains Rasmus Nielsen, one of the three artists in Superflex, and continues:
‘The space starts to curve, gravity changes, and the benches, blackboards and rubbish bins start to populate the walls and ceiling.’
Down on the platform, the station also has several clocks where the hands have run amok and take on a life of their own, emphasising that the art in the station is divergent in both time and space.
Metroselskabet har hele tiden sagt, at vi bare skulle fyre den af. På nogle punkter var de faktisk vildere, end vi var – det plejer at være omvendt.
Glimpses of science fiction
It's not the first time Superflex has turned things upside down. The artist group is best known for their orange artwork ‘Foreigners please don't leave us alone with the Danes’, which they launched in 2002 as a comment on the reactionary immigration policy in Denmark.
According to Superflex, the purpose of the art installation on Havneholmen is to give travellers a glimpse of being in the middle of a futuristic science fiction film.
‘We invite you to thematise this magical machine that is the Metro, which changes time and space in a city,’ says Rasmus Nielsen.
But don't worry, the various metro elements will also appear in their normal places, so it's still possible to see what time it is and when the next train will arrive.
Experiences with the Metro
Did you see it too?