The exhibition Guldgåsesyndromet [Golden Goose Syndrome] takes its point of departure in M.B. Pedersen’s investigation of his great-uncle, the lawyer and fabulist Kaj Tølbøll Lauritsen (1927-2012). Through archival research and family accounts, the artist follows the traces of this half-visible figure in Danish art and literary history in an attempt to reconstruct his multifaceted and collaborative practice.

Kaj Tølbøll Lauritsen was a lawyer and accountant for clients on the Danish art and literary scene. In addition, he wrote fables, which he published through his own press, Kredivia, from the 1960s until the turn of the millennium. His fables were often illustrated by artists who were also his clients, and throughout the 1970s he engaged in a collaboration with the composer and Fluxus artist Henning Christiansen, adapting his fables into songs. One of his fables was titled “Guldgåsen” [The Golden Goose] (1973), named after the golden goose on the spire of the Goose Tower in Vordingborg, which remained Tølbøll’s lifelong fascination.

At HEIRLOOM, the exhibition takes place in the office space, which M.B. Pedersen has transformed into a scenographic installation recreating Kaj Tølbøll Lauritsen’s office in Frederiksberg. The office is staged as a point of contact between different modes of practice, where archival materials and remnants from the estate are presented alongside copies of fables illustrated by Tølbøll’s clients, colleagues, and acquaintances from the artistic circles of his time. In a video work included in the installation, M.B. Pedersen revisits the golden goose, which, like the office, seems both alluring and deceptive, almost fictional.

A fable can refer to two things: (1) a short fictional narrative featuring anthropomorphisms - animals, natural phenomena, or inanimate objects endowed with human abilities; (2) the sequence of events that constitutes a narrative’s chronology, derived from the Latin fabula, meaning “speech” or “story.” The exhibition moves within this overlap between historical account and imaginative fabulation in order to approach a legacy and revisit an art history that unfolds through networks and in the unseen, behind the curtain and in the back rooms of exhibitions.

In the basement, the mini clown opera “Bredas fald” is screened, written by Kaj Tølbøll Lauritsen with music by Henning Christiansen. The production was broadcast on Danish national television (DR) in 1977 and has a running time of 25 min and 25 sec.

The exhibition is presented in conjunction with the launch of M.B. Pedersen’s publication Fasanens dårlige dag [The Pheasant’s Bad Day] in the journal *[asterisk]. In the publication, M.B Pedersen has reprinted excerpts and fragments from Kaj Tølbøll Lauritsen’s fables, supplemented by texts and fables written by the artist himself and illustrated by other artists.

Guldgåsesyndromet [Golden Goose Syndrome] is part of HEIRLOOM’s programme series Unfiled, in which we make our space available to collaborators, creating a shared opportunity to explore a particular archive. With Unfiled, we seek to draw attention to the many unprocessed and unruly stories that populate the field of art history.

M.B. Pedersen (Mikkel Bundgaard Pedersen) is a visual artist based in Copenhagen whose work spans text, installation, and video. Through book projects, video recordings, and site-specific works, Pedersen pursues an investigative practice that engages with questions of cultural heritage and history. His works often originate from archival materials and journeys to sites of local historical significance, which he processes in a field between historical reconstruction and fictional storytelling.