Opening soon: Kunsten borrows world-famous art from Louisiana

Five-meter-tall trees assembled from pieces of dead wood.

A ten-meter-long Gerhard Richter artwork where the motif remains unseen.

And a crouched sculpture kneeling with a gold-colored emergency blanket draped over it.

These are just some of the artworks featured at Kunsten Museum of Modern Art Aalborg in the special exhibition (Un)real, which showcases handpicked pieces borrowed from Louisiana’s collection.

Real or unreal?

The exhibition is part of the long-term collaboration between Kunsten and Louisiana, offering Aalborg residents the chance to experience artworks that explore various artistic interpretations of reality.

Morten la Cour, Head of Collections and Research at Kunsten Museum of Modern Art Aalborg and curator of the exhibition, explains:

“Art is not just objects or phenomena—art represents something, even when it doesn’t depict anything recognizable. In this exhibition, visitors will encounter different artists’ interpretations of reality and the perceptions we form when engaging with both the artwork and the world around us.”

Among the artworks Kunsten has borrowed from the world-renowned Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk are three massive trees titled “Tree” by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.

Ai Weiwei is globally recognized as a political activist and a critic of the Chinese government.

**”These bare trees are not just trees, but fragments of many dead camphor trees collected in southern China and reassembled into a new reality.

They can be seen as a critical representation of how a collection of individual parts is forced together under a system that tries to appear natural but is, in fact, a large, controlled illusion—an unreal reality,”** explains the curator.

The (Un)real exhibition will be open from April 12 to October 19, 2025.