In recent years Henrik Olesen has been working on iconographic research into homosocial and homoerotic representations in art and cultural history, which he showed at the Migros Museum for Contemporary Art, Zurich, Switzerland (2007). He was educated at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main (1995) and The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen (1989–1996). Recent solo exhibitions have been held at the Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel, and Museum of Modern Art, New York (2011) and the Malmö Konsthall, Sweden (2010). Other recent exhibitions include the eighth Gwangju Biennale (2010); the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland (2010); Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, the Nordic and Danish Pavilions of the fifty-third Venice Biennale, and CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2009); and the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2008). In 2012 he received the Wolfgang Hahn Prize in Cologne.