Radical Purge
View exhibited artworks:
A solo exhibition with Marie Munk
Galleri Maria Friis is pleased to invite you to the opening of Marie Munk’s solo exhibition Radical Purge – her first solo presentation at the gallery. Munk’s work was previously featured at Enter Art Fair 2024 and in the group exhibition Flesh on Flesh in 2023.
The exhibition explores humanity’s enduring pursuit of bodily optimisation. In an era where technological advancement promises immortality, the boundaries between body and machine are beginning to dissolve. What is left when the final, inefficient remnants of flesh have been purged? With Radical Purge, Munk speculates, with equal parts humour and gravity, on the concept of radical physical cleansing, presenting an absurd bouillon cube of human distillate that questions our bodily presence in a world shaped by superhuman innovation.
The series Respiration consists of five almost identical works, resembling meaty bloody airvents: hybrids of lungs and industrial ventilation systems. Like a radically condensed body, where only the breathing function remains in the most efficient design. Or, is the body is reduced to functional mechanisms in a larger technological system? We breathe together: but for how long?
Fallutopia, a series of diverse wall-mounted works that appear as fusions of fallopian tubes and freezer coils: The fusion hints at a future where reproduction is increasingly detached from the body, but through its title, it gestures toward a utopia. In an increasingly technologised world that distances us from our flesh, the fertile body reminds us of the physical reality that underpins human existence. Here, female fertility is boiled down to engineered systems. Our life-giving breathing is reduced to technical systems.
In Radical Purge, the humanity in humans seems absent. However, the systems appear dysfunctional, more aesthetically appealing than engineered for functionality.
Marie Munk
Danish interdisciplinary artist Marie Munk, works with sculpture, installation, video and performance. Her work explores the impact of technological innovation on our environment, behavior, and bodies. She creates alternative realities that blend the playful with the eerie, using synthetic materials to comment on society’s relationship with the body.
There is an endless array of technologies out there, to help you sleep better, and eat better, be better. Through themes of data, spirituality, technology and the body, Munk explores what it mean for us the merge with technology in order to optimize our selves.
Marie Munk (b. 1988, Denmark), holds a MA in Mixed Media from Royal College of Art, London. Munk has frequently exhibited internationally, often collaborating with artist Stine Deja. Her works have been shown at institutions such as MU Hybrid Art House, HeK, PERMM Museum, and EXPO Chicago. In 2022, Munk received the three-year working grant from the Danish Arts Foundation: other awards include Carl Nielsen and Anne-Marie Carl Nielsens grant in 2020 and the Danish Arts Foundation’s award for her collaborative project with Deja in 2018. Her works have been acquired by Arken Museum of Modern Art, Ny Carlsbergfondet and The Danish Art Foundation.