Exhibition period 16 September 2023 – 7 January 2024

Horsens Art Museum presents the solo exhibition Lower Lifeforms by  artist Silas Inoue (b.1981). The exhibition is the artist’s first solo exhibition at Horsens Art Museum and includes sculpture, installation and drawing.

Lower Lifeforms is a tribute to the life forms that we humans perceive as inferior, and to materials that we normally consider impure and worthless. The exhibition unfolds as a fabled underworld of demonic beings, anthropomorphic insects, enlarged aquatic organisms and biofuturistic cityscapes inhabited by molds. The works are created from used auto parts, frying oil, plastic waste, plants and living microorganisms. But although at first glance they appear to portray non-human entities, Lower Lifeforms largely reflect us humans, and the more or less sympathetic tendencies that characterise our species and the times in which we live.

With Lower Lifeforms, Silas Inoue has created a universe where analytical thinking plays together with more intuitive perceptions of the world, and where the poetic and the scientific come together to form a starting point for new ways of elucidating topics such as consciousness, evolution, ecology, economics, consumption and globalization.
The exhibition at Horsens Art Museum begins on the facade of the museum building, and spans the interior over four of the museum’s large exhibition rooms. It contains both previous and newly produced works in sculpture, installation and drawing.

Read more about the exhibition here  and in the video here. 

Who is Silas Inoue
The Danish/Japanese visual artist Silas Inoue (b. 1981) lives and works in Copenhagen. His works have been exhibited nationally and internationally, i.a. at Ulterior Gallery in New York City, Sonje Art Center in Seoul, CAPC in Bordeaux, Bornholms Kunstmuseum, Aarhus Kunsthal, Arken, Gl. Holtegaard and Sorø Art Museum.

Silas Inoue works in a field of tension between the minute and the monstrous. His work is characterized by contrasts and ambiguities, both when it comes to proportions and when it comes to the choice of materials and themes. In his work with oversized sculptures as well as detailed drawings and living microcosms, he often combines the traditional with the more unconventional; classic materials such as paper, wood and bronze meet plastic, sugar, frying oil, molds and other living organisms in a multifaceted universe that is characterized by an approach to nature and technology that is charged with humor and immediacy. A style the artist himself describes as quasi-Asian, with reference to his half-Eastern, half-Western origins. It is possible to read more about Silas Inoue on his website: www.silasinoue.com

The exhibition is kindly supported by: Knud Højgaards Fond, 15. Juni Fonden, Augustinus Fonden, Statens Kunstfond, Statens Værksteder, Grosserer L. F. Foghts Fond, Beckett Fonden, Familien Hede Nielsens Fond, Overretssagfører L. Zeutens Mindelegat and Insero Horsens.