ALEXANDER TOVBORG

In the museum collection

25.1. 2025 - 23.2. 2025

Alexander Tovborg is one of the Danish artists who most persistently, investigatively and insistently works with the religious field. He has done so in many different materials from glass to granite to painting and even large metal sculptures. His colours are overwhelmingly beautiful and modern in their expression, yet we are dealing with an artist who knows his art historical heritage better than most. He reinterprets and renews the world of religious motifs with a critical twist and masterful artistry.

The Museum of Religious Art was the first art museum to show a solo exhibition with the young and newly qualified artist. We have followed him throughout the years and continuously purchased works for the collection, just as Tovborg himself has donated his works as gifts to the museum on several occasions.

Several of the works in this exhibition were created as part of Alexander Tovborg's 2-year art project Kirken - New Eternity, 2010-12. The project was an attempt to create a new ‘religion’ with works based on the basic idea that the structural principle of all religions consists of archetypes: Creator, Morality, Mediator and Believer. The project addresses fundamental issues about what a religion actually is.

Tovborg's ‘religion’ draws on myths from religions other than the commonly known ones, but he wanted his artistic project to contain all the elements that characterise most organised religions. Tovborg does not have answers or instructions for the individual, but he shows us the different aspects of the landscape of faith.

Tovborg's art not only refers to religious and mythological subjects, his practice itself is inherently ritual, using materials such as holy water and church pews as part of his works.

Alexander Tovborg (b. 1983) graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Karlsruhe, Germany. He has had solo exhibitions at Overgaden, GL Strand, Rudolph Tegner Museum and State of Concept in Athens and Charlottenborg. He has created numerous decorations for the Danish Supreme Court, Copenhagen Airport, Jelling Church, Tejn Church and Trekroner Church, among others. He is also represented in the collections of Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, Kunsthalle Bremen, ARKEN and AroS. Tovborg is represented by Galleri Nicolai Wallner.