The exhibition Artificial Optimism revisits Italian Futurism and examines Futurist ideas, exploring their relevance today. In 1912, the Futurist group exhibited at Den Frie Udstillingsbygning, thereby introducing this new, anarchist movement to Danish audiences. In the decade that followed, Futurism rapidly expanded its reach from the realms of literature, painting and sculpture to also include theatre, photography, music, architecture, scenography, design and politics. The intention was to reinvent not only the various media of art but all aspects of life, echoing and actively interacting with the dizzying transformations and new technologies of the modern age.

The exhibition explores the intense experience of standing on the edge of a potential change that may transform everything. The exhibition title quotes F.T. Marinetti, aptly reflecting the Futurists’ ambivalent vision of the future. Artificial Optimism is part of an ongoing exhibition series, in which we revisit past moments in the exhibition history of Den Frie and reflect on art avant-gardes of the past and their relevance today. The endeavour takes a non-linear approach to the past examining how artistic practices undertaken at different times can be motivated by the same impulses, albeit from very different starting points and with different consequences. In this exhibition, we use Futurism as a prism for looking at contemporary art with fresh eyes – and concurrently with this, use contemporary works to think about what ‘futurism’ means today.