Experience acclaimed contemporary artist Alexander Tovborg's unique works in the artist's largest exhibition to date when ARoS opens the doors to Divine comedy on 24 May 2025. In the exhibition, Alexander Tovborg explores questions of morality and faith and opens up new interpretations of our shared narratives and mythological heritage.

The exhibition is centred around one of the major works of world literature: The divine comedy (1321) by the Italian author Dante Alighieri. Dante was deeply religious but also critical of any person who mismanaged their power and office, be it politicians or churchmen. It is precisely this combination of faith and criticism that Tovborg finds inspiration in.

In the exhibition, you are invited on a journey that thematically starts in a confrontation of issues such as greed, power and hierarchies and moves on to experiences of beauty, empathy and altruism. The title Divine comedy frames the exhibition and is also a prism through which Tovborg's artistic practice can be viewed.

“Alexander Tovborg grapples with the big questions of faith, existence and the meaning of life - questions that are relevant to us all across generations. With motifs that range from the Virgin Mary, Jesus on the cross, to hot dogs and even crying dinosaurs, he encourages us to explore our history and religions anew,” says Rebecca Matthews, Museum Director at ARoS.

Divine Comedy brings together more than 200 works from throughout Tovborg's career as well as brand new works created especially for the exhibition. Divine comedy includes his largest and most ambitious paintings to date, including a monumental altarpiece altars of humanity (2017) and the extraordinary work The knight of faith (2016); Noah's Ark as an inflatable installation in bright colours, complete as a ship with roof and animals in pairs. For the exhibition, Tovborg will also create two site-specific works: A fresco-inspired mural with the apple as its symbolic focal point, painted directly on the museum's walls in the open atrium on Level 1, and a monumental mosaic on ARoS' windows, inspired by the colourful glass mosaics that often adorn churches.

An artistic view of Christianity

Born in 1983, Tovborg is one of the most distinctive artists of his generation and is best known for his paintings, whose subjects are at once romantic and ultra-modern. In addition to painting, he works in a wide range of media including sculpture, installation, audio, drawing, printmaking, ceramics and performance. His figurative imagery, repetitive forms and rich colour combinations explore Christianity and the church as an institution through an artistic reworking of religious narratives, myths and symbols.

“I am particularly drawn to the human relationship with the religious and the spiritual: How we engage with religious spaces, how we use the church, and how we as humans have been used by the church. Inspired by the budding, colourful and touching universe Dante describes in The Divine Comedy, the exhibition at ARoS works with these and similar themes, and I'm excited to see how the works will enter into dialogue with each other across time,” says Alexander Tovborg.

Tovborg graduated from the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Karlsruhe, Germany and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, Denmark. He is represented by Galleri Nicolai Wallner in Copenhagen and Blum Gallery in Tokyo, Los Angeles and New York and has had solo exhibitions at O-Overgaden, Gammel Strand and Kunsthal Charlottenborg.