Provenance: Private collection, Denmark.

Following the “Circus Humanus” exhibition at Aarhus Art Museum in 1997 - and not least the sculpture entitled “Social Sculpture”, which consists of floating and entangled naked bodies rendered in rubber - Michael Kvium created a series of monumental paintings on the same theme, including also “Circus Humanus III”, which was acquired by the Danish Arts Foundation (Statens Kunstfond) and later placed in the collection of the Trapholt Museum in Kolding.

The painting shows the artist's characteristic human figures levitating or descending in an open space that transcends the boundaries of the canvas. Several of the figures are depicted entering the picture while others are exiting in a way that suggests that what we are really seeing is a very small and random excerpt of an, in principle, endless and absurd existential situation. The painting in question is, as is so often the case with the artist, a very direct and confrontational comment on the human condition and our deeds and ill deeds. However, the painting is not without clemency or humour. We are as humans, despite our apparent lack of greater purpose and free will, socially interdependent and all in the same boat.