Robert Longo, Untitled (Hellion), 2011. Private Collection. Photo: Courtesy of Robert Longo Studio © Robert Longo. Museum Exhibitions Robert Longo Apr 11 – Aug 31, 2025Louisiana Museum of Modern ArtHumlebæk, Denmark A new exhibition at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark presents American artist Robert Longo. Longo engages with mass-media images of the world, often responding directly to crises and current events. With few exceptions, Robert Longo’s works are monumental charcoal drawings on white paper, depicting the world’s hotspots.Robert Longo’s work is based on the artistic treatment of photographic reference. Over hundreds of hours of painstaking work, Longo and his assistants transpose press snapshots into charcoal on paper – student protests at an American university during the Gaza crisis, the 2022 killing of a young Iranian woman and the 2015 terrorist attack at Copenhagen’s Krudttønden cultural centre. Longo manages pulling media and pop-culture imagery from the media stream. Across the exhibition, we encounter ‘black holes’, dark places in the works where he takes out the moment, enabling us to really see them anew. Read More We live in this image storm, and I am trying to slow things down. All these images that we see for a split second, they are gone. Robert Longo, in I’m a Caveman, Louisiana Channel, 2024 Robert Longo, Untitled (The Haunting), 2005, charcoal on mounted paper, 226.1 × 365.8 cm. Private Collection © Robert Longo A majority of the works in the exhibition have been shown at a recent exhibition the Albertina Museum in Vienna. At the Louisiana, more historical depth has been added as this will be the first major presentation of Robert Longo in Scandinavia – including 53 works, created between 1978 and 2024, on loan from museums and major private collections in Europe and the US. At the Louisiana, the addition includes Longo’s 15 studies for the so-called ‘Freud Cycle’. The series isbased on photographs taken in Freud's apartment and clinic in Vienna in 1938, a few days before his escape from the Nazis to London. Read More Robert Longo, Untitled (Cindy), 1981, charcoal and graphite on paper, 243.8 × 152.4 cm. Robert Longo Studio © Robert Longo Contemporary history paintingLongo’s breakthrough series, Men in the Cities (1979-1983), depicting women and men in dramatically contorted poses, is an early example of the artist responding to key historical moments. The images are based on German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s film The American Soldier (1970), about a Vietnam veteran. Longo's generation came of age in the aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate, and the ensuing loss of cohesion in the story of America left a lasting mark on their art.Overall, Longo’s work consistently examines topics such as social and racial tension and violence in American society. The country’s role in global crises is another recurring theme. Longo makes us realise that his images are works of art, constructions with a starting point in photography that have struck something in the artist. The violence, the injustices, the popular and political struggle.In a number of works, Longo also goes further back in history, to Old Masters like Goya and Turner, converting their works to a smaller scale resembling magazine covers. Meanwhile, he blows up mass-media images of contemporary crises to the monumental scale of classical history paintings. Isolated imagesThe Louisiana's exhibition of Robert Longo, who has long been represented in the collection with a work from his Men in the Cities series, continues the museum’s ongoing engagement with artists of his generation, including Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince. All three are members of what art historians have dubbed “The Picture Generation”. Read More Installation view, Robert Longo, Apr 11 – Aug 31, 2025, Louisiana Museum of Art, Humlebæk, Denmark. Photo: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art / Camilla Stephan © Robert Longo 1/3 Installation view, Robert Longo, Apr 11 – Aug 31, 2025, Louisiana Museum of Art, Humlebæk, Denmark. Photo: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art / Camilla Stephan © Robert Longo 2/3 Installation view, Robert Longo, Apr 11 – Aug 31, 2025, Louisiana Museum of Art, Humlebæk, Denmark. Photo: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art / Camilla Stephan © Robert Longo 3/3 Carousel slide 0 Carousel slide 1 Carousel slide 2 The photographic representation of reality in isolated images was the material and critical focus of Longo and his peers. Not surprisingly, movies, mass-media images, drone shots, night-vision footage and x-rays are an optical throughline in this exhibition. In the 1990s, Longo found his true medium – charcoal – which he has used to manipulate and unpack his source material ever since.Curated by Anders Kold. This exhibition is organised in partnership with the Albertina Museum in Vienna. The exhibition is supported by the C. L. David Foundation and Collection. (opens in a new window) Learn more at louisiana.dk Read More Journal View All Museum Exhibitions Richard Pousette-Dart at the Museum Frieder Burda May 17, 2025 Museum Exhibitions Nathalie Du Pasquier at the Nivola Museum in Orani May 17, 2025 Pace Publishing Publishing Light and Space Artists May 16, 2025 Museum Exhibitions Our Artists in New York: Museum Exhibitions and Artist Projects May 16, 2025 Museum Exhibitions — Robert Longo at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Apr 11, 2025