Next Thursday, August 29th, the inaugural edition of ENTER art fair opens to both VIP and public alike in a spectacular custom built tent in the progressive development district of Refshaleøen, close to the historic heart of Copenhagen. Unique as the Nordics only international contemporary art fair, ENTER welcomes 30 galleries from around the world. Here we meet a selection of the participants and learn of their plans for the fair.

Based in Berlin and considered one of the world’s leading galleries, König Galerie was founded by Johann König in 2002. It currently represents 40 international emerging and established artists, mostly belonging to a younger generation. The program’s focus is on interdisciplinary, concept-oriented and space-based approaches in a variety of media including sculpture, video, sound, painting, printmaking, photography and performance.

Having long participated in the most prestigious international art fairs such as Art Basel, Frieze Art Fair, London, FIAC, Paris and Art Basel Miami Beach, the gallery has a pedigree for successfully placing works in a variety of private and leading public institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Guggenheim Foundation. In May 2015, König Galerie undertook the bold step of relocating to St. Agnes, a monumental former church built in the 1960s in the Brutalist style, where large-scale exhibitions take place in two different spaces, the former chapel and nave. The church was built by Werner Düttmann, between 1964 and 1967, a leading architect and Berlins’ director of urban development. The renovations were realised by renowned architect Arno Brandlhuber.

The gallery’s plan for ENTER is to bring a representative selection of artists from the gallery roster, including works on paper, photography, free-standing and wall-based sculptures and installations, and painting, both from younger as well as from established artists. Some of them are already well known in the Scandinavian market. The selection specifically includes 13 different artistic positions including artists like Kathryn Andrews, whose show “Circus Empire” just finished in the gallery. Alicja Kwade is currently on view on the rooftop at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. They will also present Claudia Comte, a Swiss artist who works in a variety of media including sculpture, engraving, installation murals and painting. Her impressive show “I Have Grown Taller from Standing with Trees” is currently on show at Copenhagen Contemporary and is running until September 1st 2019. Katharina Grosse, with her famous large-scale coloured acrylic paintings, ranks among the most important contemporary artists in Germany and Natascha Süder Happelmann currently contributes to the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. In Venice you can also see Jeppe Hein’s famous “Modified Social Benches” practical sculptures which transform themselves and their immediate environs into unique object/subjects of both conversation and interaction. In addition they will showcase Mexican artist Jose Dávila with a balanced stone sculpture, the Danish artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset, known for its witty and subversive sculptures, newly represented artist Robert Janitz, Berlin-based Anselm Reyle and Michael Sailstorfer as well as sculptor Andreas Schmitten and Belgian artist Rinus van de Velde, known for his charcoal paintings.

MLF | Marie-Laure Fleisch is a contemporary art gallery located in the Ixelles gallery district, in the heart of Brussels. Originally founded in Rome, and previously located in both cities, the gallery has been situated solely in Brussels for the past 18 months. The plans for ENTER are to represent the fair’s unique position as both a Scandinavian and an international fair by showing artists from the Nordic countries alongside artists with whom the gallery has long-standing relationships from Germany and Italy. The booth concept itself is very influenced by nature and minimalism, with strong poetic undertones—very much representative of the gallery’s program, which focuses on emergent to mid-career artists who show a strong conceptual rigour while still creating beautiful objects. The exhibition history has shown a strong propensity for the lyrical, with artists and works which do not shout for attention but instead draw the viewer in for an intimate conversation. This is the first time the gallery will be showing in Copenhagen, and also in Scandinavia in general

They plan on showing a large number of works by prominent Swedish artist Christine Ödlund, which will go straight to the Kristianstad Museum in Sweden after the fair for a two-person exhibition with Fredrik Söderberg, opening in October. These works are linked to plant communication and the similarities between plants and man. One series of works on view actually forms an electroacoustic music score showing the drumming of butterfly’s legs on stinging nettle leaves, which relates beautifully with the mechanical sculpture by the legendary Rebecca Horn that will also be exhibited, Butterfly with Black Volcano Stone.

Complementing these more figurative elements of nature, they will show works which offer quiet contemplation and harmony by Are Blytt (Norway), Alice Cattaneo (Italy) and Katharina Hinsberg (Germany). Using the mediums of painting, Murano glass-based sculpture, and paper cutaway, respectively, each artist creates works which are very much linked to the materiality of their medium.

Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery has exhibition spaces in both London and Berlin with which to promote its ambitious program. The gallery is dedicated to cutting-edge art from all over the world. Her roster of exhibited artists share a strong theoretical basis combined with a thorough mastery of their various chosen media. For ENTER they will present works by Iranian Hiva Alizadeh, British artist Lydia Blakeley and Norwegian Martine Poppe. All three skilfully construct a nuanced commentary of their individual surroundings, grasping a cross-cultural relevance with subtle humour.

Layering vividly coloured locks of synthetic hair as if they were veils of oil paint, Iranian-born artist Hiva Alizadeh creates a new kind abstractions. Almost intangible, shimmering and vaporous, diaphanous skeins of his wall-mounted pieces both echo and evolve the two-dimensionality of the painted surface.

Blakeley uses paint to reflect the present, which is saturated with snapshots of hyper-reality, and by using the medium as a response to popular culture. Through the painting process she attempts to introduce new layers of meaning, develop narratives and present alternative interpretations of our actuality. The materiality of her paintings reinforces the permanence of the image within an increasingly dematerialized world.

Living and working in London, Oslo and Paris, Poppe sources materials, often photographs or fabrics, which then instigate her process. Sometimes she affixes the source material behind translucent fabrics on stretchers, creating a screen that she can see through developmfurthrs through the application of paint. At other times, she tears and scrunches her material, reshaping it as standing barriers in the exhibition space. Rather than regarding her work as photography, painting or sculpture, she develops each piece from the fluidity between the materials, concluding with a piece that defies ready categorisation.