Danish artist Michael Kvium, born 1955, works in painting, prints, drawing and watercolour, and sculpture, as well as performance and stage design. His paintings and graphic works often resemble comic strip art or extensions of 17th-century Baroque paintings, depicting the more negative aspects of Western culture. Motifs include grotesque monsters, half man half woman, sometimes approaching self-portraits. He is expressing himself in a personal world of images. His works seem familiar, making the viewer smile at one time and causing disgust at another, yet in their strange way all sharing this familiarity. Kvium defines and expresses his wholly personal and unflinching understanding of powerful human presence in an area unexplored by others. This first comprehensive monograph takes the reader through Kvium's entire career since his beginnings in the 1980s. It reveals the various lines in his work from early experiments as a young artist in the world of bikers to an outspoken critic of our current Western society. AUTHORS: Gitte Orskou, born 1971, is a Danish art historian and has been appointed director of Stockholm's Moderna Museet with effect from September 2019. Prior to this she served as chief curator at ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum 2001-09 and as director of Kunsten-Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg, Denmark, 2009-19. She has also been in charge of the Danish pavilion at the Venice Biennale has published widely about modern and contemporary art. Brooke Lynn McGowan is a New York-based writer and curator. 230 colour illustrations
