Tint

In her first major solo exhibition, Tint, Danish artist Anna Munk constructs paintings as complex layers of surfaces, blending classical references with contemporary materials. Drawing on still lifes, historical fires, and cloud studies sourced from online museum collections, she integrates oil paint, wax, tinted lip gloss, foundation, and highlighter.

The works freeze ephemeral moments of beauty – ripe fruit, drifting smoke, or billowing clouds – while pointing toward inevitable decay. Munk’s approach places traditional painterly motifs in dialogue with contemporary rituals of appearance, reflecting how historical and modern preoccupations with surface, beauty, and desire intertwine.

Installed across O–Overgaden’s upper gallery spaces in Christianshavn, Copenhagen, Munk’s oversized paintings confront viewers with both physical and perceptual scale. Central motifs, apples, fans, or smoke, anchor each canvas, while surrounding elements dissolve or fade, emphasizing the fleeting nature of visual experience. Repetition and enlargement transform familiar motifs, stripping them of conventional meaning, while subtle hints of powder and moisture evoke the atmosphere of museum storages. Through this combination of scale, materiality, and sensory nuance, the exhibition transforms the still life into a meditation on transience, impermanence, and visual memory.

Tint situates Munk’s work in a contemporary visual economy where image, desire, and appearance dominate daily life. By incorporating cosmetic products alongside traditional oil painting, she mirrors the ritualistic creation of a “fresh face,” linking historical meditations on beauty to modern practices of self-presentation. Large-scale repetition and digital sourcing of motifs comment on how historical imagery circulates in contemporary culture, reflecting both fascination and detachment. The exhibition encourages viewers to consider the interplay between permanence and impermanence, reality and its representation, while questioning the act of looking itself.

Anna Munk (b. 1994, Denmark) trained at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (2022) and lives and works in Copenhagen. Tint marks the culmination of her participation in the one-year INTRO program, generously supported by the Aage and Johanne Louis-Hansen Foundation. Curated by O–Overgaden, the exhibition showcases Munk’s unique visual language – monumental, layered, and materially rich – bringing together historical references and contemporary sensibilities. Following presentations at P21, Seoul (2025), Atelier W Pantin, Paris (2024), and Den Frie Udstillingsbygning, Copenhagen (2023), Tint positions Munk’s practice as a critical reflection on beauty, temporality, and the materiality of painting in the twenty-first century.