Elmgreen & Dragset, "The One & The Many"

Elmgreen & Dragset, "The One & The Many", 2011. Photo from culture and life.

I like artworks that demand participation: Settings that I become a part of or works that are only realized if I engage myself in them.

I very much enjoy showing "Boy Scout" (2008) to kids that visit Bergen Art Museum, where I work as a Museum Lecturer.

And there are several works by Elmgreen & Dragset that I wish that I had had a chance to see: "Just a Single Wrong Move" (2004), "Prada Marfa" (2005), and "The Collectors" (2009).

So I think that I will just have to go to Rotterdam to experience "The One & The Many" before it closes on September 25.

Elmgreen & Dragset, "The One & The Many", 2011. Photo from culture and life.

Then I believe I will have to go by boat to an old submarine wharf, where I will walk down a spooky "subway" tunnel that will take me to a ghetto-like city scape inhabited by people that I would not feel safe to encounter in real life.

Elmgreen & Dragset, "The One & The Many", 2011. Photo from culture and life.

I will go for a ride on the Ferris wheel and peek through the windows to see what the tenants in the apartment building are up to, and if possible, I will enter the building to take a closer look.

According to Sjarel Ex, who presents "The One & The Many" in the following video, I will get so engaged in the stories that are played out in the work, that I will continue thinking about the people I have encountered long after I have left the place.

In this next video, Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset talk about "The One & The Many" and another work they will have going for the next year in front of the Rotterdam City Hall: "It's Never Too Late To Say Sorry".

Christoph Marthaler, "plus minus zero"

Christoph Marthaler, "plus minus zero". Photo from der neue Merker.

This year's Bergen International Festival is nearing its end, and I have not had time to see by far as many shows as I would have wanted to. But last night I went to a performance that was presented as theatre: Christoph Marthaler's "plus minus zero". What a lucky choice! - Though maybe not a very likely one, since I had read an unfavorable review in Bergens Tidende the same morning. Too bad that paper sends a theatre critic to review a work like this, and not an art critic. Because complaining about lack of storyline and coherence seems to me completely beside the point as long as Marthaler communicates precisely through his break with theatre convention.

Christoph Marthaler, "plus minus zero". Photo from NCF.

The seemingly incoherent mix of scenography viewed as installation art; choir music performed in human tableaux;  text presented in different languages, and thus enhanced, sometimes like poetry; simple movement repeated in dancelike patterns; Inuit stories told without translation (but with clues given through body language); the slowness, stillness and meditation; - it all suggests notions of a world view so different from western rationale that we simply cannot understand it through linear, analytic communication.

Kurt Johannessen, "Steinen" ("The Rock")

Kurt Johannessen, "Steinen" ("The Rock"), 2008. Photo by Unni Seim Eidsnes, from zeth.

Hiking the barren landscape 85 kilometers northeast of Bergen, 900 meters above sea level, one may come across a gilded rock. Among many rocks of similar size and shape, this single one has received a coat of gold as a token of gratitude from the artist Kurt Johannessen.

He has turned one rock into a piece of art, and indirectly, the surrounding rocks and landscape become parts of the work. The gilded rock (art) and the other rocks (nature) mutually define each other, but it is hard to tell exactly where the piece ends. - How much of the landscape becomes part of it?

Kurt Johannessen, "Steinen" ("The Rock"), 2008. Photo by Unni Seim Eidsnes, from zeth.

I have hiked mountains close to this one, but I have never seen "The Rock". Now that I know it is there, I will seek it out some time this summer. But then my experience will lack the element of surprise that I would have felt if I had bumped into it unwittingly. - How great that must be:

- To imagine that the gold is solid (what a treasure!), but then also to know that "The Rock" belongs where it is.
- To walk along enjoying the beautiful scenery and then suddenly be confronted by ART, - a different kind of beauty.

***
Dag Sveen has written an interesting text about "The Rock" (in Norwegian), from which I have borrowed.
And on Kurt Johannessen's home page the gilding process is documented, and there are directions to the site.

Two more Kabakov installations

Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, "The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away
(The Garbage Man)", 1988. Photo from artnet.

"The Garbage Man (The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away)"

Unlike the Kabakov installation I showed on Tuesday, this one can be entered. Three rooms that allude a kommunalka are filled with junk that has been collected by the imaginary owner of the apartment. Everything is neatly labelled and organized on tables, in cabinets, and on charts that cover the walls.

What would otherwise be considered waste is turned into art that can make us reflect on just how much junk we leave behind. And the stuffiness and dusty feeling underneath naked light bulbs becomes a nightmare where we never get rid of all that junk.

Or...
We become touched by the love this person has put into his tedious archival work, and by the memories that can be attached to details from our own past.

Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, "Treatment with Memories", 1997. Photo from artnet.

"Treatment With Memories"

I saw this installation in the 1997 Whitney Biennial, and have thought of it many times since.

Walking through a corridor with fainted "hospital green" colored walls, I reached a barren room where simple iron beds were turned towards one projector each, showing images from the absent clients' early lives. Supposedly as treatment against dementia.

But there were no other signs of human life in the room, just an eerie notion that death had already arrived, and that the images that flickered in the light from the projectors would continue as eternal loops.

***
"The Garbage Man" can be visited at The National Museum in Oslo until January 15, 2012

Ilya Kabakov, "The Man Who Flew into Space from his Apartment"

Ilya Kabakov, "The Man Who Flew into Space from his Apartment", 1985.
Photo from Kunstkritikk.

Ilya Kabakov creates installations that tell stories from the lives of fictional characters. "The Man Who Flew into Space from his Apartment" consists of two rooms: The hallway in a communal Soviet apartment, and the room from which the story's protagonist has taken off into space through the ceiling and the roof, using the catapult he has made by attaching a seat to bed springs and rubber bands.

Ilya Kabakov, "The Man Who Flew into Space from his Apartment", 1985.
Photo from Cold War Art.

The walls in his very simple room have propaganda posters plastered all over. There are also sketches of his contraption and his expected orbit, and he has made a model of his town and apartment building, from which a metal string indicates his flight into space.

Ilya Kabakov, "The Man Who Flew into Space from his Apartment", 1985.
Photo from comixcube.

In the grimly lit hallway outside his room, yellowing pages tell the following story:

The lovely inhabitant of this room, as becomes clear from the story his neighbors tells, was obsessed by a dream of a lonely flight into space, and in all probability, he realized this dream of his, his "grand project".

The entire cosmos, according to the thoughts of the inhabitant of this room, was permeated by streams of energy leading upward somewhere. His project was conceived in an effort to hook up with these streams and fly away with them.
A catapult, hung from the corners of the room, would give this new "astronaut", who was sealed in a plastic sac, his initial velocity and further up, at a height of 40-50 meters, he would land in a stream of energy through which the Earth was passing at that moment as it moved along its orbit.
[...]
Everything takes place late at night, when all the other inhabitants of the communal apartment are sound asleep. One can imagine their horror, fright, bewilderment. The local police are summoned, an investigation begins, and the tenants search everywhere, in the yard, on the street, but he is nowhere to be found.

***
 "The Man Who Flew into Space from his Apartment" is part of the exhibition Take Me to Your Leader! at Bergen Art Museum (until May 8, 2011).

Cerith Wyn Evans

Cerith Wyn Evans, "Untitled", 2010, one part of the installation S=U=P=E=R=S=T=R=U=C=T=U=R=E
("Trace me back to some loud, shallow, chill, underlying motive's overspill") Photo from Bergen Kunsthall.

I walk between trunks of light. And I unwittingly slow down my pace.

The light itself is warm and comforting - not too bright - and I notice that it changes slowly. While one trunk is almost completely dimmed, another one reaches a peak of brightness.

It is as if those poles of light make the entire room radiant with a subtle, otherworldly energy. And when I stand close, I can feel a round and friendly - I'll almost say loving - heat.

But there is also sound.

- Can sound be warm? - Can I wrap it around me like a thick - but lightweight - comforter?

The entire room oscillates. - Walls like bellows that breathe very calmly. - And a small wood of light-trunks that grow (eternally?) into the ceiling, from far below the floor.

Dan Colen, "Peanuts"

Dan Colen, "Silent Treatment", gum on canvas, 2010. Photo from afmuseet.

When you Google Pictures search "Dan Colen" you get as many photos of cool art dudes partying as you do artworks he has made. That makes me apprehensive. - Like I was when I arrived at his Astrup Fearnley Museum "Peanuts" show last weekend.

And his chewing gum pictures confirmed my prejudice. They give off an air of art school adolescence, and are not very different from this painting which he has found and included in his show:

Dan Colen, "The Big Swirl", found painting, 2006.
Photo from Joshua Abelow Art Blog.

Colen and the group of art buddies he used to hang out with have been called the "Bowery School", from The Bowery in New York. For a short while in the 1990s I lived on St. Mark's place (close to The Bowery) together with aspiring artists of many different disciplines. And often I would see helpless artwork like the one above put out on the sidewalk to be chucked into a garbage truck.

What was interesting, I thought, when I saw "Silent Treatment" and "The Big Swirl" hanging next to each other in the Astrup Fearnley exhibition, was that Colen's chewing gum canvas only barely rests on the right side of the boarder towards a less than mediocre art school student's desperate attempt to come up with something original ... - Chewing gum!

Dan Colen, "Self-portrait as the wanderer
(as I pause to ponder: do real men break hearts?
I decide yes! They do. Only to later change my mind.)",
 oil on found painting, 2004. Photo from afmuseet.

There are quite a few found paintings in the show to which Colen has painted additions. - Like the one above that I show in a small version to protect under age viewers...

This hangs on a wall all by itself, and becomes quite poetic - even touching - by way of its title.

Dan Colen, "Eviction Party", flowers on canvas, 2010. Photo from afmuseet.

The flower pictures radiate a similar poetic sensibility. - Those fresh, but perishable colors smeared into an unprimed canvas ...

Dan Colen, "The Whole Enchilada", 2010. Photo from Kunstkritikk.

And even this knocked over flagpole becomes an image of general sadness and loss, rather than a political statement.

All this subtle and potent poetry finally managed to outshine Colen's insisting cool, and it proved my visit to the Astrup Fearnley Museum worth while.

With this new - more positive - attitude I was even able to find something interesting in his banal text paintings:

Dan Colen, "Holy Shit", Photo from jameswagner.

"Holy Shit" placed upside down is more interesting than "Holy Shit" placed the right way.

Dan Colen, "Holy Shit", Photo from Peres Projects.

And "Holy Shit" mirrored is more interesting than "Holy Shit" upside down.

Dan Colen, "Holy Shit" t-shirt, Photo from Urban Outfitters.

But "Holy Shit" on t-shirts from Urban Outfitters becomes far too much!
(It is this consumerism - latent in all the text paintings - that makes them annoying.)

***
(Norwegian readers should check out Kjetil Røed's excellent review of "Peanuts" at Kunstkritikk.)

Tino Sehgal, "This Progress"

Photo from Kunstnernes Hus.

I was not disappointed.
My expectations were high. I came all the way from Bergen just to listen and experience. And I am happy I did.

First I listened to the talk on Friday.
About his interest in dance as an activity that does not produce material products (which he considers problematic because one cannot engage with them). Inter human communication is much more interesting, Sehgal says. And he does not want his works to be documented (to be made into material products) because one has to experience them first hand. The quality of the experience, says Sehgal, is more important than access to information about it.

When I came back to experience "This Progress" on Saturday, I understood better his aversion towards documentation. Until then, I had just read about his work and seen a few illicit photographs of it. What I had read and seen made me very interested in its conceptual aspects, but having experienced "This Progress" live, I realise that the gap between contemplating his concept intellectually and actually experiencing it is much wider than it is in the instance of object based conceptual works, like Joseph Kosuth's "One and Three Chairs":

Joseph Kosuth, "One and Three Chairs", 1965. Photo from MoMA.

Elsewhere in this blog I have stated that what I enjoy most about art is the way it can alter my perspectives. A painting, a photograph or a video can make me think, feel and understand something in a different way than a factual text can do. But that kind of interaction with a material work is very dependent on my own initiative and thus limits itself to my projections of meaning. For instance, Joseph Kosuth's "One and Three Chairs" cannot ask me questions that I myself do not think of while standing in front of it.

Tino Sehgal's "This Progress", however, can (on a very literal level) ask me questions, and that is exactly what it does.

As I entered Kunstnernes Hus on Saturday, a young girl (11 years old?) came over to me and said "This is a work by Tino Sehgal." Thinking about it now, that statement itself induces many questions: What is the work? Is it you? Is it you talking to me? Is it me answering you? Well, I did not think about all this then, because I had to focus on the question she actually asked me: "What is progress?"

From there on, the piece could have taken many directions. I could have decided that this was not something I wanted to take part in, or I could have given a nonsensical answer and thus sabotaged (?) the intention behind the work, but either way I would have already become a part of it.

Nice and clever as I want to be, I tried my best to give as good an answer as possible using terms that I thought the young girl would understand. And strolling through one of the downstairs galleries at Kunstnernes Hus with this sympathetic young girl was very enjoyable, even though I was slightly distracted by self-conscious thoughts about being partially responsible for the execution of the work ...

But I warmed up quickly enough, and really got going when I was handed over to a young man (around 20) who asked me how I have experienced progress in my own life. He took me up the back stairs to one of the second floor galleries, and there I was handed over again, to a woman (around 40) who listened patiently to a couple of stories I told her as an answer to her statement that people should not keep cats or dogs as pets ... By the time I had to leave (the man (around 60) who was the last one I talked to was told by Sehgal that he had to go talk to somebody else), I had really taken advantage of the chance to just ramble on ...

When it was over, I sat down for some lunch to digest the experience.
I thought about the interpreters (the people who talked to me): How demanding it must be to stay present and attentive towards so many different people throughout the day! Do they consider the conversations rewarding or just hard work? How much are the conversations really worth as constructive interaction, and how much are they "tainted" by the excitement inherent in the situation (the thought of being a piece of art ...)?

Well, while I was sitting there in the ground floor restaurant looking out at the beautiful winter sun on the trees and snow across the street, I nourished a very good feeling: I was moved by the interaction itself, - the simple beauty of meeting four people I newer knew, in a setting that in its strict limitations became liberating. When else do I get to talk to complete strangers about important matters without having to wonder about their agenda, the impression they have of me, etc.?

I was tempted to go again, to try once more. But I decided I had had my chance, and I was afraid the experience might be watered down a second time. It would perhaps have been interesting, though, to see what would be different if other "interpreters" had taken me around, or if I had come on a day that was not the busy opening day. (Jerry Saltz did five rounds of "This Progress" at the Guggenheim and managed to make the artwork cry ...)

Edvard Munch, "Munch - Master Prints" at Bergen Art Museum

Edvard Munch, "The Scram", photo from Trykk of foto 3SF.

Edvard Munch made so many versions of "The Scream", from which so many reproductions and so much paraphernalia have been produced, that I find it very hard to look at this work with fresh eyes, - even when I stand face to face with one of the original versions at a museum.

- As I did yesterday, in Bergen Art Museum's exhibition "Munch - Master Prints". Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any downloadable version of that particular work, but you can see a detail of it here.

What struck me when I viewed the image from a distance (it hangs on the end wall in a narrow rectangular room), was that even though it is a lithograph, it resembles a woodcut. The strong vertical and diagonal lines in the bottom half of the picture look like they are carved out of wood, and they form a dramatic contrast to the softly waving horizontal lines in the quiet background landscape.

Seeing a carefully hand colored version of this print was quite refreshing. Just a few blue and orange lines between all the black ones make a great difference. The subtle orange color that Munch added to the sky, gives it a warm evening glow, which is reflected on the contours of the suffering face.

Edvard Munch, "The Sick Child", 1896, lithography. Photo from Listen. (Same image, but not the same print.)

While there was only one version of "The Scream" in the "Munch - Master Prints" exhibition, many of the titles were shown in several versions, for instance "The Sick Child". It was interesting to see prints with different color combinations placed right next to each other. But what I found most enjoyable in all the "Sick Child" prints, was the way their simple composition as well as Munch's rendering of light, made me focus on the girl's face and on the reflection right in front of her face.

Edvard Munch, "The Sick Child", 1885-86. Photo from Nasjonalmuseet.

- Much more than I do when I look at the "Sick Child" painting Munch finished ten years earlier.

"Edvard Munch: Master Prints",  National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, July 31 - Oct 31 2010. Photo from France24.

The prints are hung in series, on dark walls, with scarce lighting, in much the same way as you can see on this photo from a similar exhibition at the US National Gallery of Art. And walking quietly through the darkness where the prints are lit by dim spotlights, you become intimately confronted by eerie and private subject matter.

Five different "Madonna" prints are shown, but I have seen that image so many times already, and this exhibition did not make me discover anything new about it. So instead of posting a "Madonna" here, I will show you a print that I cannot remember having seen before.

Edvard Munch, "Moonlight", woodcut, 1896. Photo from A Polar Bear's Tale.

There are three versions of "Moonlight" in the exhibition, and they are quite different in regard to the rendering of light and the visibility of wood structure. - Quite amazing how Munch has managed to make the woman's face glow with moonlight by carving wood and putting some ink on it, don't you think?

Tino Sehgal at Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo

In yesterday's post I complained that I have never had a chance to experience a work by Tino Sehgal. Well, today I found out that he will come to Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo at the end of this month for a conversation with two art historians (January 28), and an exhibition (January 29 - March 6).

So should I book a flight that takes 50 minutes or spare the environment by sitting on a train enjoying mountains and woods for 6-7 hours?

Debate in Bergens Tidende

Michael Johansson, "27m3", 3x3x3m, site specific installation, 2010.
Entrée at BGO1, Bergen Art Museum. Photo: michaeljohansson.com

Observant readers have already seen Michael Johansson's cubical sculpture in this post about the room Entré curated for the BGO1 exhibit at Bergen Art Museum.

I am showing it again now because I have been so busy debating the art public and criticism in the regional paper Bergens Tidende, that I have not had time to write any post since Thursday.  - And that debate revolves partially around this sculpture.

I have posted my text, Øystein Hauge's reply, and my reply to Øystein Hauge here. It is all in Norwegian, of course, so if you would like to comment on the debate, please feel free to do that in Norwegian.

Michael Krebber, "Miami City Ballet IV"

Michael Krebber, "Miami City Ballet IV", 2010.
Photo from Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Berlin, 2010

I stopped by Bergen Kunsthall the other day to see the exhibit of four artists that is currently showing there. Among all the works that are included in that show, the one above, by Michael Krebber, gave me the most momentous moment of seeing "something".

But what was it that I saw?

For starters: Three primed canvases in a vertical pile that is halfway covered by a polka dot "hood", with a smear of black paint up towards the right.

This seemed quite meaningless to me. But knowing how rear it is, - that experience of not immediately connecting a visual uttering with some kind of perceived message, I was thrilled. And even more so when I found out that the work is titled "Miami City Ballet IV".

The connection between the covered up canvases and the title "Miami City Ballet IV" made no sense to me. I could find no literal connection, apart from thinking of other artists that have painted ballet, - Degas, for instance. But bringing Degas's impressions of dancers into my moment at Bergen Kunsthall, just seemed like an irrelevant distraction.

- Or maybe the three canvases could be perceived as stopped in moment, lined up and covered by a mutual piece of costume? No, the title "Miami City Ballet IV" left me with an even stronger notion that this work does not give any direct meaning in and of itself. (But the exciting experience of actually trying to find one, and feeling very close to finding it, was what made that moment at Bergen Kunsthall worthy of bringing on.)

What I found when I looked for meaning outside of the artwork itself, you can read below the next pictures. But that is more or less random information which ends up confirming a notion that this work is not a painting in any traditional singular sense, but a "painting" that is only concerned with the premises of "painting" as a general notion, and with the context that makes works like "Miami City Ballet IV" possible.

(If you are uncertain about the term "context", please look at this former post).

Michael Krebber, "Miami City Ballet I", 2010.
Photo from Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Berlin, 2010

Michael Krebber, "Miami City Ballet II", 2010.
Photo from Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Berlin, 2010

Michael Krebber, "Miami City Ballet III", 2010.
Photo from Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Berlin, 2010

Since then, I have found the paintings "Miami City Ballet" numbers I-III. They were included in a show Michael Krebber had at Galerie Daniel Buchholz in Berlin this summer.

Michael Krebber, "Miami City Ballet", Installation view, Galerie Daniel Buchholz, 2010

And this was how the paintings were installed: Three of them to the left, and then the covered up ones to the right. With a big box clad in fabric between.

Michael Krebber, "Miami City Ballet", 2010,
invitation card photo,  Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Berlin, 2010

I also found out where the artist got the title from: The entire show at Daniel Buchholz was titled "Miami City Ballet", and here is an excerpt from the invitation card written by Krebber:

"'Miami City Ballet" shall be the first stop in, or the downbeat of a series of ”new” exhibitions
following a lengthy period of inactivity. I took the photograph on the invitation card during a
Douglas Crimp lecture. It shows the photograph being projected—of Edward Villella—the ballet
dancer and later founder of the "MCB"—in the midst himself of holding a lecture. He shows his
arm; looks at it and—according to Crimp-comments on it. That he is “beholding” his arm is un-
knowable from my blurry photograph. More or less the same applies here, too.

[...] At this point we put in the picture of Paul Swan, the actor and dancer who once held the title: "Most Beautiful Man in the World"; Swan who appears and dances beside a curtain behind which he disappears for a costume change or some other preparation but doesn’t reappear except perhaps when no one can believe it any more.[...]

- So was this what Michael Krebber intended all along: Covering up the paintings ("painting") until no one can believe in them (believe in "it") any more?


***

On December 2, David Joselit will speak about "Painting Stripped Bare" at Bergen Kunsthall.

Robert Rauschenberg at Black Mountain College

Black Mountain College: experiment in art, ed. Vincent Katz, 2002,
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia

When I read that Gagosian Gallery now represents the estate of Robert Rauschenberg and is showing a museum quality retrospective exhibition of his work at their 21st Street Chelsea space, I came to think of the documentary film about Black Mountain College I did research for as an intern at David Royle Productions in New York in the early 1990s. I was only at the production company for a semester, and I never got to see the film finished, but I was fascinated by what I learned:


- Black Mountain College was such a magic place! Beautiful, as you can see from the picture above, and very important as a hub for artistic experimentation and collaboration in the early careers of great artists like John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauschenberg and many others (...Cy Twombly, Kenneth Noland, Susan Weil, Denise Levertov...)

Robert Rauschenberg, "White Painting", 1951, Gagosian Gallery.

Robert Rauschenberg was adamant about distancing himself from the Abstract Expressionists. He wanted to minimize evidence of the artist's hand, and painted a series of all-white and a series of nearly black paintings. According to Vincent Katz in Black Mountain College: experiment in art, John Cage has said that Rauschenberg's white paintings gave him the push to compose 4'33'', his very important silent piece.


Many collaborative and experimental happenings were staged at Black Mountain College, and "Theater Piece No. 1" which John Cage "orchestrated" in 1952 is considered the first one. There was film, there were slides, Cage talked about music and Zen Buddhism from a stepladder, Cunningham and other dancers moved through and around the audience, and Rauschenberg's white paintings were suspended above.

Viola Farber in "Summerspace", 1958 by M. Cunningham,
Design: Robert Rauschenberg, Photo from: MONDOBLOGO

In 1958 he designed the set and costumes for Cunningham's "Summerspace", first performed in New London, CT, with music by Morton Feldman.

Robert Rauschenberg, "Bed", 1955
Museum of Modern Art, Photo: artnet.

And while he was still at Black Mountain College (the school closed in 1956), he acquired the quilt that he used in one of his first Combines (what he called the kind of works he is most famous for having made, in which he used found objects).


Tornsey and Elsley in their book Quilt Culture: Tracing the Pattern, p. 149:
The Log Cabin quilt used in Bed once belonged to artist Dorothea Rockburne. She recalls, "It was kind of special to me because I had it at the time my daughter Christine was born, and she used to spend a lot of time on it. I didn't actually give Bob the quilt, it just sort of appeared one day. We were living at Black Mountain College then, and when you sent the wash out things had a way of appearing and disappearing. I remember when I first saw the painting he had made of it I thought 'Oh! That's the quilt that I had!' It was a wonderful experience seeing it."

Entrée at BGO1




Michael Johansson, "27m3", 3x3x3m, site specific installation, 2010. Entrée at BGO1, Bergen Art Museum.
Photo: Vilde Andrea Brun.

 

These days, at Bergen Art Museum, there is a cube put together from stuff that has been collected at different artists' studios. It is the work of Michael Johansson, who has done similar sculptures in many other venues.

Michael Johansson, "27m3", 3x3x3m, site specific installation, 2010. Entrée at BGO1, Bergen Art Museum.
Photo: michaeljohansson.com

The dimensions of this cube fit very well into the room in which it is exhibited, - in such a way that it activates the space around itself, and seems to be of perfect size. Since the walls and the space around the sculpture are (almost) empty, it is as if lots of stuff that has been lying around, somehow magically imploded into a perfect cube...

And by transforming into art transportation boxes, monitors, file drawers, and light bulb packs etc., this sculpture pays homage to the tedious everyday studio effort that has been carried out to produce all the other works that are exhibited in the same collective show, - while also directing our attention behind the scenes of the art museum.

When I first saw this sculpture, I enjoyed its formal aspects very much: The composition of colors, shapes, and different sized objects. Does anybody else come to think of a Mondrian painting?

Gabriel Johann Kvendseth, "First we take Manhatta, Bow & Arrows", 2010. Entrée at BGO1, Bergen Art Museum.
Photo: Vilde Andrea Brun.

Then, quietly, in the corner of the room, these three arrows have been shot into the wall. Well, one is broken, and the back part of it lies on the floor. This subtle and delicate work by Gabriel Johann Kvendseth goes well together with the big and loud colored cubical sculpture. Sometimes a quiet whisper becomes more audible than high-pitched insistence...

(This one room in the exhibition BGO1 at Bergen Art Museum has been curated by Entrée)

Olafur Eliasson (+ maternity care in Ethiopia)

"Your strange certainty still kept", 1996, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

A rule I have set for myself in writing this blog, is always to present works that I have experienced "live" and that have made a lasting impression on me.

That is true of "Your strange certainty still kept". When I saw this at Tanya Bonakdar gallery in 1996, it was the first time I came across Olafur Eliasson's work, and it made me want to see more. The problem is, now, so many years later, I can only remember that I very much liked this work, but not why...

"The weather project", 2003, Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London, UK.

And having announced that rule, I go ahead and break it right away...
I never got to experience "The weather project". But I would have liked very much to lie down on the floor in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, bathing in the light from the big "sun", while looking at my reflection in the mirror that covered the ceiling high up above me in the "sky"...

"Many small fireflies",
ongoing, Maternity Worldwide.

What I do get to see everyday, though, is the "Many small fireflies" screensaver that I got when I donated 30 euros to Maternity Worldwide's work in Ethiopia, where they give women life saving maternity care.

On my black computer screen, a myriad of fireflies light up, each representing a donation that has been made to Maternity Worldwide. Thus, for every person who donates, a new firefly is ignited, and this way your contribution becomes part of the artwork itself.

(Here you can see what it looks like.)

Caravaggio

"The Calling of St. Matthew", 1599-1600, San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome. (Reproduction cropped top and bottom.)

This is one of Caravaggio's most famous paintings, "The Calling of Saint Matthew". I have seen it in reproduction so many times and was very exited to get to see it "live" when I was in Rome recently.

I enjoyed its technical mastery and composition, - particularly the light that comes in from the top right corner, falls on Christ's hand, and illuminates the sitting men's doubtful looking faces and the money in front of them on the table.

And it was interesting to see, within the walls of a church, the greedy counting of money in such a gritty and cellarlike room. But I experienced an even greater contrast between the next two paintings and their ecclesiastical surroundings. They are placed on either side of the very colorful and celestial "Assumption of the Virgin" by Carracci, in Santa Maria del Popolo.

"The Crucifixion of Saint Peter", 1600-1601, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome.

"The Conversion of Saint Paul", 1601, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome.

Do you see how literally down to earth Caravaggio has chosen to tell these two stories? - The dirty feet and dug up gravel on the ground below the cross in the first picture. - And the tangle of horse legs and human legs in "The Conversion of Saint Paul". Here, the spiritual is brought down not only to the contemporary everyday, but to the very practical and dirty reality of pushing a cross into a vertical position, or possibly being stepped on by a horse when one has been struck to the ground by a blinding vision of Christ.

In both paintings the light serves not only to accentuate the main character, but also to create a very intimate visual room for us to enter. And you can see how the light creates a similarly intimate setting in the last painting, where Christ helps his mother crush the head of a snake that symbolises original sin.

"Madonna of the Palafrenieri", 1605-1606, Galleria Borghese, Rome.