CHARLOTTENLUND.- The Danish visual artist and writer Ann Linn Palm Hansen opens the summer season at Ordrupgaard with her largest solo show to date. For this occasion, she has created ninety-three new works and seven contemplative lyrical texts to form a total installation in the spacious Zaha Hadid gallery. The exhibition Ann Linn Palm Hansen. Moving Motif is realised in close collaboration with the artist herself and the texts in the exhibition are published in an accompanying catalogue.

’Painting over what truly is
To reassemble anew
As one moves towards the motif’
- Ann Linn Palm Hansen

Ann Linn Palm Hansen (b.1984) has distinguished herself both as a visual artist and a writer of art-theoretical and fictional books. Her practice is characterised by an exploratory approach that challenges conventional notions of colour and form and increasingly engages with the shift from abstraction to motif. At once rigorous and sensitively probing, Palm Hansen employs a variety of media to explore the relationship between figuration and abstraction. She works systematically and, paradoxically, within a strict mathematical universe, soft, poetic works emerge, triggering curiosity and inviting reflection. Her practice is underpinned by an exploratory approach that revolves around questions rather than answers.

Moving Motif

In the exhibition Ann Linn Palm Hansen. Moving Motif, the artist emphasises the tension between figuration and abstraction as the overarching theme. In her works, all created specifically for the exhibition, she has further developed the relationship between geometry and colour. At the same time, new facets have been added to her earlier examinations, as a more figurative element has emerged, often informed by memory images and photographs. To Palm Hansen, the transition between the recognisable and blurred raises the issue of how we navigate in the world when our visual points of reference shift or disappear.





In the exhibition, the gradual transition from abstraction to figuration is traceable in the artist’s treatment of human bodies and horses. These familiar figures serve as stable points of reference that dissolve when they meet geometric shapes. Body parts are combined with circles and triangles in hybrid compositions, where slight shifts create new meaning and challenge viewers’ perception. Here the systematic approach is not a limitation but a productive framework that opens the way for a wealth of interpretations.

In the series Relations From A to Aa, which also occupies a central position in the exhibition, Palm Hansen has devised a visual language for human relationships. Through an alphabetical structure and the use of colour codes based on categories such as form, function, material, and temperament, the relational is systematised. In this way, something that normally eludes concrete description is given form. The result is a sensuous rendering of the abstract, where art and scientific thinking converge.

As a prelude to the exhibition, a short film is shown in which Palm Hansen articulates her work methods and artistic reflections. The film offers the audience an insight into her complex and inquisitive universe. With the exhibition, Ann Linn Palm Hansen. Moving Motif, museum visitors will see the most comprehensive presentation to date of the artist’s work.

Dialogue with the collections

Exhibitions of contemporary art are a recurring feature at Ordrupgaard where they help contextualise the museum’s collections. In this case, Palm Hansen drew inspiration from both the French and Danish collections ‒ most notably Paul Gauguin’s Adam and Eve (1902), whose feet echo through the exhibition, but also Vilhelm Hammershøi’s Sunbeams or Sunshine (1900), whose exploration of light, line, and form also served as a source of inspiration for the artist. These undertones create a space in which past and present mirror one another.

The exhibition catalogue is the first major publication devoted to the artist. In addition to Palm Hansen’s own texts, it includes contextual essays by writer and publisher Asger Schnack and by Lilian Munk Rösing, lecturer at the Institute of Art and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen. Palm Hansen herself designed the book’s visual presentation in collaboration with graphic designer Louise Hold Sidenius.

Ann Linn Palm Hansen (b.1984 in Odense) graduated from the Kolding School of Design (2010) and the Design Academy Eindhoven (2012). In 2019, she published the art book (Shape, Color) Riso I. In 2021, she wrote her first novel Igennem landskaber, and that same year, she took part in the group exhibition Light & Space at Copenhagen Contemporary. In 2021‒2022, she presented the exhibition Arithmos at Skitsehandlen, Faaborg and, in 2023, she featured in two solo shows For det meste and Nedslag at Munkeruphus and Vestjyllands Kunstpavillon, respectively. In 2024, she published her second novel Cirkel for cirkel. In 2026, she is scheduled to publish the poetry collection Jeg er allerede en anden. A series of works created for the exhibition at Ordrupgaard will feature in the group exhibition Tingene imellem os at Faaborg Museum 27 September 2026 – 7 March 2027.