Copenhagen: Kunstal Charlottenborg
The Sensing Salon: The Aesthetic and The Formation of The Modern Subject
30 Sept 2023 - 14 Jan 2024
For Charlottenborg's 140th Anniversary, curators Francesca Astesani and Julia Rodrigues invited the Sensing Salon to examine astrological charts related to the establishment of Charlottenborg Palace, The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, and the Exhibition Building. When studying the astrological charts of the relevant dates to Charlottenborg, we found an image that renders it a key for reading the role of the aesthetic field in post-Enlightenment thought.
The image appears in the very first chart, which is that of the creation the Danish Royal Academy of Art, in 1754. It combines two astrological formations: a Sesquisquare between Pluto (in Sagittarius) and Mercury (in Aries) and a Grand Trine between Pluto (in Sagittarius), Sun Conjunct Venus (in Aries), and Jupiter Conjunct Neptune (in Leo). The Sesquisquare aspect indicates a challenge, a conflict that is fundamental but barely visible, and that manifests through external events, which force the person, or the project in this case, to face the issue. The Trine (and the Conjunctions) indicate that the energies of the planets involved work in concert towards facilitating each other.
With this combination of harmonic (Trines and Conjunctions) and a tense (Sesquisquare) aspect, which touches virtually all planets/astrological bodies in the chart, we found that later events would manifest the Royal Academy’s project. A project which is key for understanding the task the aesthetic has performed in the past two hundred years or so, the re-constitution of Man, through the figures of the Subject, the Human, and Subjectivity. While this project is already announced in the Royal Academy chart (1754), its political import becomes explicit when Charlottenborg was created (1883), with its hidden threat fully manifesting 40 years later, with the emergence of fascism, and other totalitarian political programs.
The installation consists in a composite image of the chart and an audio of our reading. Design by Arely Amaut.
