Kristian Kragelund

For his first New York solo exhibition, London-based Danish artist Kristian Kragelund lines the gallery with engraved aluminum plates drawn from years spent trawling online forums, the dark web, and the source code of computer viruses. The malware he transcribes is written to destroy the machines that run it, yet embedded in its violent, corporate syntax are confessions—declarations of love and longing that seem to dissolve the code’s destructive purpose. The show’s title, Strm und Drang, lifted directly from a line of viral code, doubles as the 18th-century German movement that prized emotional intensity over social convention, its impulsive, dishonorable protagonists epitomized by Goethe’s Werther. Bisecting the space, multiple grey-tinted glass structures refuse any comprehensive view, dispersing every vantage through reflection and translucency—an architecture of evasion that rhymes with the malware’s own emotional opacity. Here austere materials become containers for a visceral fragility.

Kristian Kragelund (b. 1987) is a Danish artist based in London, UK. He received his BA (Honours) in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins in London, UK and MFA from Columbia University in New York City. His work has been exhibited widely internationally and his work is held in private and public collections including The Danish Arts Foundation and as a permanent public commission in Whitechapel, London.