Come Crawl all over Me is the first exhibition opening the newly founded Kunsthal Thy. The phrase comes from a Spiderman figure that seems to be crawling towards the viewer from one of the bed sheets on display. It is reminiscent of one of those catchy pop songs that put complicated emotions into simple words and thus help those who cannot (yet) express their feelings themselves. In the exhibition, such phrases adorn other children’s bed sheets with motifs of music and sports idols. The idols cover dreaming adolescents and give them illustrations for the possible paths that lie ahead of them: professional football players, popstars, actors or singers. “Don’t you want to be like me?” they seem to ask. But Heine Kjærgaard Klausen, with his provocative rephrasing and exaggeration of seemingly harmless imagery and textual material from pop culture, draws attention to the aggressive, belligerent poses, the phallic accessories and clownish boyish smiles that they actually show. “Do you (really) want to go to bed with me?” Heine Kjærgaard Klausen seems to be asking and thus, with humorous, homoerotic subtlety, encourages you to think about who you really want to identify with.

The sculptures that Heine Kjærgaard Klausen presents at Kunsthal Thy speak a different language. They are casts or originals from flea market finds. The mannequins or decorative busts, have classical echoes and always show the same motif: the well-formed male torso. Heine Kjærgaard Klausen arranges the bodies in a circle to form a round dance, cuts them in half and fuses them together. It is the male body as a visual object that cannot run away without legs, cannot defend itself without arms and cannot be asked for its opinion without the head. In contrast to the bed sheets, however, there is no criticism here of the glorification of an all-too-perfect male body, for it is precisely this body that is celebrated.

Heine Kjærgaard Klausen (DK / 1978) studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. He has exhibited at Viborg Kunsthal (DK) and Møstings Hus (DK), among others. In addition, Klausen has repeatedly shown performances and productions, for example in Den Frie and Overgaden (both in Copenhagen), on the island of Ærø and in New York. In 2015, Heine Kjærgaard Klausen received a three-year work grant from the Danish Arts Foundation, and in 2019 Klausen curated the festival “Mellemting mellem ting”, a three-day performance festival at Den Frie Kunsthal in Copenhagen, which was awarded a distinction by the Danish Arts Foundation.