Yngve Holen

Galerie Nordenhake is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition of Norwegian-German artist Yngve Holen (1982, Germany) in Mexico.
Holen’s practice is based on a long investigation of the relationship between the machine and the body, through sculpture and often using industrial parts, materials, techniques and residuals, the artist explores the way in which technology has shaped our desires and wishes, in an age where consumer culture is becoming increasingly exacerbated.

For this exhibition, Yngve Holen focuses on his ongoing interest in the forms that make up the subtext of our shared “reality” in a new series of works conceived specifically for Galerie Nordenhake Mexico City, composed of agave leaves cast in
bronze at a 1:1 scale.

Taking as a reference a natural resource and symbol of the urban landscape of Mexico City which is inserted in the relations of production of national identity, where the organic is mixed with the industrial and our being in the world outlines a turbulent moral landscape.
Known for his singular vision of sculptural tradition in contemporary and constantly evolving consumer culture, his pieces raise multiple questions while remaining autonomous. A leaf is like the remnant of a dagger, precise and tenuous like the stealthy menace of a Norse warship. This fractured timeline also reflects Holens’ previous work with Norwegian 5G towers and German CT scanners, signs and portals of inside and outside: messy insides and sleek exteriors.

Yngve Holen’s sculpture dissects the technologies reshaping contemporary life. While his work is characterised by his use of machines, systems and industrial spare parts used for, around, and by the human condition – in transportation, communications, waste, medicine, manufacturing or industrial food production – the body itself is almost always evoked only in its absence. Material remnants of frenzied aspirational living: the desire to live longer, to travel further and faster, or to enhance intelligence, are all folded into Holen’s works. The resulting objects short-circuit and contradict themselves to highlight the fraught subjectivities and troubled moral landscapes of today. Spanning classical to state-of-the-art industrial processes, Holen’s works complicate the conceptual functioning of the technologies at stake, reframing them as ornamental, or – despite their futuristic constitutions – delivered with a flat, unnerving humour, as future relics of a bygone era.

Yngve Holen was born in 1982 in Braunschweig, Germany, and lives and works between Oslo and Berlin. He studied architecture at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, and sculpture at the Städelschule in Frankfurt. His work has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at Galerie Neu, Berlin (2023); Spazio Maiocchi, Milan (2022); X Museum, Beijing (2021); Modern Art, London (2019); Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo (2019); Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (2018); Converso, Milan (2018); and Kunsthalle Basel (2016). He has participated in recent group exhibitions at Modern Art, London (2024); Bundekunsthalle, Bonn (2022); Gropius Bau, Berlin (2020); Museo Jumex, Mexico City (2020); Kunstmuseum St. Gallen (2020); Kistefos, Oslo (2019); and mumok, Vienna (2018); among other venues. Holen has been the recipient of prizes including the Overbeck Prize (2020); the Robert Jacobsen Prize (2017); and ars viva (2014/15). His sculptures are held in collections including Aïshti Foundation, Lebanon; The National Museum of Art, Oslo; Lafayette Anticipations, Paris; Museo Jumex, Mexico City; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; and Sammlung Boros, Berlin.