Thomas Bangsted Exhibition

Marc Straus

This event has ended.

MARC STRAUS presents our fourth solo exhibition of new works by Detroit based artist Thomas Bangsted (b. 1976, Denmark).

Bangsted has always set about to make images that initially seem impossible to capture. He accomplishes this in the end by spending as many as five years returning to the locus, reshooting images, recrafting a composite, all while adding or subtracting material.

In recent years he’s focused on images of moments from Danish history that were never well documented, if at all. In these new works historical Danish sculptors, C.J. Bonnesen (1868-1933) and Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844) are his subjects. Bangsted addresses ideas of national history, heritage, myth, grandeur, and dramatic decay. Bangsted lived in Denmark until he was a young adult. These images hark back to familiar Danish landscapes, but have largely been constructed in Michigan, where Bangsted lives and works. He travels extensively, sometimes taking hundreds of large-format negatives, to then painstakingly montage into these images, in order to convey his vision of these historical passages.

One group of new black and white photographs recreates the precarious relocation of Bonnesen’s largest public work from 1926; the bronze monument ‘Thor’s Fight with the Jötunns.’ Originally commissioned by a WWI profiteer who had made a small fortune selling goulash to both sides, it was placed on the highest point of his private island Thorø (Thor’s Island). Rediscovered mid- century, it was dug up, moved by cart and raft off the island, and during a quiet winter night rolled to its new home. An example of his meticulous process, Bangsted had to recreate a close replica of the large card used for this transport, by retrofitting an American hay wagon with a winch and steel skeleton in his backyard.

The second group of photographs in the exhibition, illustrates the inner courtyard of Thorvaldsens Museum in Copenhagen, looking back into the structure’s 170-year history. In 1838, the frigate Rota returned from Livorno, Italy with Thorvaldsen’s lifework and personal collection, which had been bequeathed to the city to be housed in the nation’s first public art museum.

Thomas Bangsted (b. 1976, Denmark) received a MFA in Photography from Yale University, School of Art in 2007. His work is in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of New York and was included in their 2015 exhibition of recent acquisitions and reviewed in The New York Times.