Jakob Kolding | New Editions

Kolding highlights the influence of architecture in shaping our lives and the tension between dreams of the future and our lived reality.

A very large proportion of the buildings in Denmark date from the 1960s, a period when the Danish welfare society was undergoing rapid development. Jakob Kolding’s series of photogravures is based on images of architectural models from that period, originally published in the Danish magazines Arkitekten and Arkitektur. The models embody past ideas about the society of the future—visions and utopias that, as the artist describes them, seem both futuristic and nostalgic today.

In each print, Kolding juxtaposes photographs of different architectural models, transforming them into landscapes that are at once familiar and alien. Through printing the photogravure technique in black-and-white, the works acquire a simultaneously dream-like and documentary quality that further complicates the distinction between historical record and science-fictional dream. The motifs are partly informed by places to which the artist has a personal connection, where the architecture formed the framework for both upbringing and education. The architectural models thus become not only representations of collective visions of the future, but also reflections of Kolding’s own lived experience.

The series title partly draws inspiration from the Russian writer Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky (1887–1950) and the American artist Mike Kelley (1954–2012). In Memories of the Future (1929), Krzhizhanovsky reflects on futures right after the Russian Revolution. In Educational Complex (1995), Kelley constructed a large-scale architectural model based solely on his memories of his childhood home and the educational institutions he attended. Through these four photogravures, Kolding reflects on the hopes and ambitions embedded in the architectural models of the 1960s, and on the potential of architecture in a space between what came to be and what was never realised.

The prints are on view at Kastrupgårdsamlingen as part of Jakob Kolding’s exhibition En eller anden bryder ind i et hus og bor der så længe som muligt from 18 June – 27 September 2026.