Homecity

Is it possible to create an entire city from the houses in which one has lived throughout one's life - a home city in the most literal sense?

This is exactly what the contemporary Danish artist Morten Str�de (b. 1956) has done in his total installation Homecity.

Comprising 200 computer drawings, seven sculptures, four animated films and a model city, the work has been underway for a decade.

For the first time it is presented in toto at Arken.

Despite all references to existing buildings, Homecity is a utopia.

As a sort of architect of the utopia Morten Str�de creates a fantastic, nonexistent place; the embodiment of a city in which you are completely at home but which only exists somewhere between memory and fancy.

The exhibition, then, is about personal recollection, the collective historical consciousness and the history of the European city.

At the same time it concerns the way in which we take in our surroundings and the spaces of the city - and how the physical setting influences our notions of the city emotionally and intellectually.

Morten Str�de (b. 1956) has been a dominant figure on the Danish art scene since the 1980s.

He is an alumnus of The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen (1978-85), first under Sven Dalsgaard and subsequently Hein Heinsen.