Known for their videos that straddle the lines between tragedy and comedy, John Wood & Paul Harrison will present a large-scale installation titled ‘A film about a city’ alongside new paintings for their solo exhibition in Copenhagen. Wood (*1969) and Harrison (*1966) live and work in Bristol, United Kingdom.

“We’re not really into master plans,” they declare when speaking about the work that mimics the model-based planning of a city. Unlike other master plans, Wood and Harrison’s proposal was intentionally not conceived to develop beyond the presented architectural model. According to the artist duo, it is a collection of badly laid plans. The installation, which takes up the entire exhibition space at von Bartha, Copenhagen, invites the viewer to discover all these flawed or even impossible inventions and circumstances, which on closer inspection, reveal themselves. Here, long ramps lead pedestrians up to nowhere, the bus stop has no space for waiting passengers, and the penthouse in the high-rise is the only existing space in the building. All are parts of the bits and pieces between other bits and pieces that make up the work that makes up a city. In addition to the installation, We Built This City presents a series of new paintings by the duo.

Opening: Thursday, May 25, 2023, 5–7 pm