RUNE BOSSE—BEHIND THE SURFACE

Rune Bosse has taken over the greenhouse in the Ordrupgaard Art Park with a site-specific living sculpture that will restore the building to its original function as a plant nursery—albeit in a new format. With a scientific and philosophically investigative approach, Bosse creates a field of grain that grows straight upward, rising monumentally in space. The installation invites visitors to enter into the structure. Surrounded by walls of grain reaching up toward the sky, viewers are confronted with roots that are normally hidden beneath the earth’s surface, but which are now exposed in their vulnerability. Throughout its exhibition period, running from April to November, Behind the Surface will undergo continual change.

Rune Bosse (born 1987) has truly made a mark with his enchanting living sculptures, through which he studies nature’s structures using the poetic and empirical methods that have become his artistic DNA. In Behind the Surface, Bosse presents the familiar Danish field of grain as an architectural form that the visitor can move into and around. There, one is swept away by Bosse’s fascinating explorations of nature’s powers—and of its underlying fragility.

The installation consists of vertical boards of mixed grains and flowers placed in a double circle. From the outside, the work appears as a large, living sculpture, while a passage leads into the installation’s interior. The work almost takes on the character of a scientific laboratory fashioned in a stunning visual idiom. In Behind the Surface, Bosse initiates organic processes that unfold over time. The artwork will change continually: grains and grasses will grow, bloom, and wither again, and visitors will be able to notice the influence of the sun and the passage of the year.

Behind the Surface explores the inherent powers of the seed and the complex mechanics of roots. Bosse first explored these processes in 2014 with his work Levity, and once again in 2017 with the installations Network and In, Around and All InBetween, both created in collaboration with the artist duo Studio ThinkingHand.

The idea that nature, body, and mind are closely tied to one another permeates Bosse’s work. It forms the basis for his repeating investigations of human beings’ impact on nature, nature’s impact on humans, and nature’s impact on itself. When he delicately studies roots, plants, sprouting grains, and withered leaves, Bosse attempts to understand the fundamental mechanisms of nature—and to see humanity in their light.

The Greenhouse exhibitions 

Once each summer season, in a new annual exhibition series, Ordrupgaard invites a contemporary artist to create a site-specific work focusing on climate and sustainability for the greenhouse in the Ordrupgaard Art Park. The first such exhibition took place in 2023 with the participation of Veronica Hodges, and in 2025, the artist duo Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg will participate.

This exhibition series has been made possible thanks to funding by the Villum Foundation for a comprehensive renovation of the greenhouse, which dates back to 1921.

The Greenhouse exhibitions are generously supported by:

Ny Carlsbergfondet

15. Juni Fonden

William Demant Fonden

Inge og Asker Larsens Fond til støtte af almennyttige formål

Dansk Tennis Fond

Ernst B. Sund Fonden