Jesper Dalgaard (b. 1974) lives and works in Copenhagen.
Since graduating from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2001, Dalgaard has made his mark as a distinctly original voice in Danish contemporary art.
In categorizing him, ‘sculptor’ is the label most readily applied, but it needs to be understood in the broadest sense. A distinct strand of social criticism runs through the Dalgaardian world., targeting the degradation of the environment, and capitalism’s homogenization of both individuals and the wider world, while at the same time giving form to our desire to start afresh and realizing our unfulfilled dreams.
Along the way, Dalgaard also has a pop at the decorative function of art and art’s commodification. And yet at the same time, the whole remains sufficiently enigmatic and ambiguous – features reinforced by the titles’ narrative slant – to capture the viewer’s imagination and send it wandering far out into the galaxy.
Dalgaard states, "Sometimes I have figuratively perceived my artistic project in such a way that if you imagined an anthropologist's first encounter with an undiscovered island community, then my sculptures are the anthropologist, the island, and the community at the same time”