Fanboying in Copenhagen
an artist, a brewery, a restaurant
I’ve spared you the gory details on most of my other museum visits, but I have to write a little about Olafur Eliasson’s installation Riverbed at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (located about 30 minutes outside of Copenhagen by train) because Eliasson is one of my favorite artists. Earlier on my trip I saw his Turner color studies at the Tate Britain — painted perfect gradients of colors sourced from famous J.M.W Turner paintings onto donut-shaped canvasses. But before Riverbed, I’d never seen an installation by Eliasson. He makes a lot of different types of art, but his installations are what he’s best known for.
Riverbed is, on its face, very simple. You walk down a hallway with boardwalk flooring into a typical museum art gallery. White walls, well lit, etc. The floor in the gallery, however, has been transformed into a virtual riverbed, covered with smooth stones of various size. An actual trickle of water running through the whole thing, cascading down the steeper bits of rocks where there are stairs. And it’s not just a layer of gravel that’s been thrown down; the floor has significant topography, and seems to ignore the walls and doorways of the gallery space.
There’s no designated path through the landscape, you just kind of wander until reaching a reading room at the end, at which point you must turn around and exit the way you came in. It’s natural but very sparse, much like the photographs of Iceland Eliasson published in a new book also debuted at the exhibit. Perhaps more than anything, this exhibit made me really want to go to Iceland sometime.
So a guy put a bunch of rocks in an art museum. Why does Brian think this is cool?
It’s art that’s participatory and immersive; as a visitor you are part of it, and it’s all around you. It’s not confined behind proximity sensors or crowds of people; you literally get to walk all over it.
I also think the practice of creating simulated nature inside an art museum space is interesting. You can look at it as a sly middle finger to stuffy gallery spaces, or a statement that natural beauty deserves to be examined with the scrutiny that manmade art is. Or maybe it’s just meant to be a meditative spot. In an interview about the piece, Eliasson said “It’s about exposing yourself to time, to things taking time. The walking is time unfolded.”
Personally, I did find it to be meditative. It’s funny how just putting something inside a museum makes you pay more attention to it than you might otherwise. Writing about it now, after my trip is over, I still remember the feeling and sound of walking over the layer of rocks, and watching others do the same. Eliasson’s first exhibition at MoMA was titled Take Your Time, and you get the feeling that’s what he wants you to do here too.
Still, I get that it’s not for everybody. I heard somebody upon reaching the end say “That’s it?” Some of his installations deal more with doing impressive things with light, mirrors, color, and haze. I would love to see some of those too, but I thought Riverbed was pretty cool.
Also in the museum was a theater showing some of Eliasson’s films and, and one of my favorite parts, a “model room”. The model room is essentially a table covered with hacked-together bits of wire, 3D-printed plastic, foam core, and other materials. It’s rare to see an exhibit focus so much on process and intermediate products, and I love seeing that stuff. It reminds you that works don’t just get conjured out of nothing, and gives you a peek into what the tables at Eliasson’s large Berlin studio must look like.
I highly recommend exploring some of the stuff he’s done using “Your uncertain archive” on his website. Even if you’re not interested in Eliasson, it’s a really cool piece of web design.
Øl & Brød
OK. So I’m done gushing about an artist. Time to gush about something else. I have also spared you the gory details of food and beer I’ve had on my trip thus far, but this place also requires an exception to be made.
The first time I ever heard about Mikkeller, I was with friends at the excellent Northdown Tavern in Chicago. After a couple drinks, our probably drunk bartender leaned in and started speaking in a hushed tone. “Listen. You guys wanna try some really good shit?”
Of course we did. He brought out a fantastic beer by Evil Twin Brewing (Imperial Biscotti Break Natale — Pretty Please With A Cherry On Top, for all the beer nerds out there) and mentioned that the brewery was called Evil Twin because the guy was the twin brother of the guy who started Mikkeller. “Between the two of them,” he said, “they’re making some of the best beer in the world.” In my experience thus far, he’s right.
A couple days into my Copenhagen visit I remembered that Mikkeller was based in Copenhagen. While I couldn’t find any sort of brewery tour type of thing, they do have a few bars sprinkled around the city, and a new restaurant that specializes in smørrebrød– Danish open-faced sandwiches. I was sold.
The place is called Øl & Brød (pronounced oel og broed… yeah, good luck with that), aka “beer & bread”. The interior is very hip– extremely well decorated, with an almost comically meticulous table setting and Scandinavian rock played over the speaker at the host’s podium. In addition to having several taps of delicious beer from Mikkeller and others, they also have the most extensive Akvavit (a spiced Scandinavian liquor) list of any bar in Northern Europe. Didn’t get around to sampling any of that though.
I wanted to get a real Danish delicacy, so I went for the pickled herring sandwich which was topped with fennel, cabbage, apples, and onions in various states (pickled, grilled, raw) and aioli, piled on top of a slice of very dense, dark rye bread. I took the menu’s recommendation (it has beer pairings for everything they sell) and got a glass of Boon unblended lambic beer to go with it. You’ll hear more about lambics when I write about Belgium, but the way they’re brewed makes them tart or even sour, which was perfect for complimenting the pickled bits of the sandwich and cutting through the creamy/oily bits.
After the meal I walked next door to the Mikkeller bar, tried a few tasters of beer, and talked with a pilot from Phoenix, AZ who was stopping by on his day off. Beer nerddom, like any nerddom, is great for making quick connections while abroad.
Needless to say, if you’re ever in Copenhagen you need to give this place a look for lunch. It’s a little pricier than just going to a kebab place or something, but it’s still reasonable (for Denmark) and entirely worth it. One of the best meals of my trip. And if you’re not going to Copenhagen any time soon, keep an eye out for Evil Twin or Mikkeller beer at your local bar or liquor store. Be sure to read the labels; both breweries have excellent senses of humor.
Just as a reminder, I’m choosing to write about favorite spots and stories in each city I visited as opposed to major attractions which you can read about in any guidebook. Yes, I visited Christiania and the Nationalmuseet and the Little Mermaid statue and all that. If you want to hear more detail about my trip, just talk to me ☺
