Kolding makes collages of picture and language material based on urbanism and youth culture. Sources might be historical city planning magazines, or his own photos or experiences as a skateboarder.

The Dane, who was born in 1971, grew up on a housing estate on the edges of Copenhagen. As a child, he felt completely happy in the thoroughly-regulated, residential area because “there were many playgrounds, football fields and children.” As an artist, Kolding has concerned himself more critically with the “non-places” of the periphery (in 2001 also with the situation in Vienna). However, Kolding never forgets to ask about the lost utopias of the out-of-control modernistic ideal city: “Many ideas were social and humane. But why were those intentions so inadequately realised?” Kolding’s approach is: How can one recapture the free spaces?

Wolfgang Kos, 2005 (translation: Tim Sharp)