MULTIPLE CHOICES
All of the Above
January 17 - February 10, 2008
Oslo Kunstforening presents Multiple Choices, an exhibition that brings together the work of Ana Linnemann, Danger Museum and Alex Villar, artists whose work matured in relation to the artistic contexts of Brazil, Europe and the U.S. The exhibition displays a range of tactics regarding the engagement of audiences in contemporary art while emphasizing the significance of diversity as a marker of cultural specificity.
While these artists are equally invested in fostering the relation of their work with their audiences, each of them invokes very particular types of relationships. Linnemann's piece introduces slight disruptions in the viewer's perception of everyday objects commonly found in interior spaces. Inconspicuously placed throughout the OKF space, a group of indistinct objects will be, with the help of motors, submitted to discreet performances at regular intervals, engaging the viewer in an inquiry about perception, but also about the apparent fixity of established orders. Hers is a subtle but radical destabilizing maneuver of the linguistic codes that organize cognition. In this case the audience is invited to experience perplexity over the unexpected destabilization of their territories. | more
While Linnemann's work seeks to deconstruct representations of the world, Villar's work pursues an unmediated intervention in the world that constitutes our subjectivities. Through a series of slippages in the unwritten codes of conduct that organize our use of everyday spaces, his work unravels the conformity of proper behavior that characterizes our quotidian gestures. Villar’s video recording of his performative interventions are brought to bear upon the viewer as to cause a disjointed empathetic response. The audience is indicted by confrontation through a distorted mirroring of their own daily performances. Villar's piece for Multiple Choices inscribes the viewer in an spatial situation akin to the ones his video seeks to derail. The artists will present his video Overtime within an office cubicle made out of the same type of provisional walls found in corporate environments. | more
Like Linnemann and Villar, Shimizu and Renberg are also concerned with regulatory codes, primarily those operating within institutional boundaries but also those rules gearing the functioning of artistic communities in general. In creating their own institutional structure so to speak, they break the code by rewriting it in more encompassing ways. Their practice generally consists in requesting the direct participation of other artists and audience members. For Multiple Choices, they worked with Fortune Cookie musicians Boram Hong and Heejong Yoo to produce a music album and with Markus Degerman to create a record player table, which they will present in an installation where the viewers may engage with the cultural fragments that shape our perceptions of another culture. | more
ARTISTS
Ana Linnemann, Rio de Janeiro
Her work explores the boundaries of established cognitive categories, mainly through the use of sculpture and electronic media installations. Among her most recent projects is BeadBeat, a digital sound installation consisting of an orchestra of pearls strings, exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro in 2007. Also current is The Invisibles, consisting of common objects which perform little actions at regular intervals, shown at Six Outdoor Projects, Long Island University, NY, The Museum as a Place, Museu Imperial de Petrópolis, RJ. Other exhibitions include the Sculpture Center, NY (In Practice Projects), Gabinete de Arte Raquel Arnaud, São Paulo and Mercedes Viegas Arte Contemporânea, Rio de Janeiro, El Museo del Barrio, NY and the Museo de Arte Latino-Americana de Buenos Aires (MALBA), Argentina; Subtle, in The Work Space, NY; Pedras Bordadas/Espaços Vestidos Paço Imperial, Rio de Janeiro. She has also exhibited in the Bronx Museum for the Arts, Rotunda Gallery, Islip Art Museum and White Box.
Danger Museum, Oslo/Tokyo
In recent works Shimizu and Renberg of Danger Museum have established their own image world in photography and collages, based on explorations of social environments, museum collections and geographies or restagings of iconic imagery. They also produce textiles and sculptures and are involved in productions that feed into other artistic genres such as music. Selected projects and exhibitions by Danger Museum: The Danger Museum, inIVA, London, 2002, Thinking Archives. Archiving Thoughts, Sparwasser HQ, Berlin, 2004, Bound_Less, Stenersenmuseet, Oslo, 2005, Opacity, UKS Gallery, Oslo, 2005, Blow-In, Cork Public Museum (part of Cork Midsummer festival / Cork 2005: European Capital of Culture), Cork, 2005, An Clar Glas, Peacock Visual Arts, Aberdeen, 2005, Panoramic Paper, Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge, 2007. Upcoming: In 2008 Danger Museum participates in exhibitions at Preus Museum, Horten and Oslo kunstforening and presents a solo exhibition at the UKS gallery, Oslo."
Alex Villar, New York
His work draws from interdisciplinary theoretical sources; it employs video, installation and photography. Individual and collaborative projects are part of a long-term investigation of potential spaces of dissent in the urban landscape. Exhibitions include: New Museum, Mass MoCA, Drawing Center, Exit Art, Stux Gallery, Apexart and Dorsky Gallery in New York; Institute of International Visual Arts in London, Museu de Arte Moderna in Sao Paulo, Galleri Tommy Lund and Overgaden in Copenhagen, UKS in Oslo, Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius, the Goteborg Konstmuseum in Sweden, Galerie Joanna Kamm in Berlin, Signal in Malmo, Galeria Arsenal in Poland, Lichthaus in Bremen and Halle für Kunst in Luneburg.
PUBLICATION
The Multiple Choices exhibition will be followed by the publication of a book edited by Trude Iversen, including texts by Mikkel Astrup, Eva Diaz, Gloria Ferreira and Trude Iversen. While the immediate focus of the texts is set at the intersection between contemporary artistic practice and its audiences, the task for this group of writers is to consider the wider implications of such an encounter. The question of the public is inevitably linked to any idea we might have on an art audience. For instance, what notion of community do we uphold when we refer to an audience? Is it the radical democratic sphere that Mouffe sees as enlivened by agonistic relations? Or is the coming community that Agamben conceptualizes as a state of potentiality? Is it possible to articulate a shared terrain without the necessary translation of the culturally specific events that differentiate art practices in varied contexts? The writers will provide an overview of the historical precedents, discus the current status of these debates in their immediate contexts and reflect upon the role of cultural specificity in the reception of these ideas. The book will also include projects planned for the printed page by Ana Linneman, Danger Museum and Alex Villar; the publication is being designed by Lina Viste Gronli and is scheduled for the Fall of 2008.
WRITERS
Mikkel Astrup, Oslo
Ph.D fellow at the University of Oslo, research on Beckett, sickness and desire- affiliated with the Infectio project on medicine and literature. Also researching on societies of control and capitalism. Teaching 20th century literary theory and literature. Editorial credits include the "Global Beckett" anthology (current) and published articles in Norwegian cultural journals on Beckett, Deleuze and Guattari, capitalism, sickness, and the Hamas.
Eva Diaz, New York
New York-based art historian, curator, and critic. Throughout 2006-2007 she served as the Joanne Leonhardt Cassullo Curatorial Fellow at the New Museum of Contemporary Art. She is a doctoral candidate in art history at Princeton University, where she is completing her dissertation titled "Chance and Design: Experimental Art at Black Mountain College." Her essay on Black Mountain, "Experiment, Expression and the Paradox of Black Mountain" appeared in the Arnolfini Gallery (Bristol, England) and Kettle’s Yard, (Cambridge University, England) catalogue for the retrospective Starting at Zero: Black Mountain College, 1933-1957. She was featured as a presenter at the 2005 International Contemporary Art Experts Forum at ARCO in Madrid, and at the College Art Association conference in 2005 and 2007. Her writings have appeared in Art in America, Modern Painters, Time Out New York, numerous exhibition catalogues, and will appear in the forthcoming book Curating Subjects x 21, edited by Paul O’Neill, to be published by Open Editions in London. Since 1999 she has served as the Instructor for Curatorial Studies of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program.
Gloria Ferreira, Rio de Janeiro
Art critic and an independent curator. She holds a doctorate in Art History from the University of Paris I – Sorbonne; currently a collaborator professor in the Postgraduate Studies Program in Visual Arts at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro’s School of Fine Arts. Curatorial credits include Art as question The 70’ (2007); Trilogies. Nelson Felix (2005); Situations; Brazilian Art of the 1970s (2000); Ecco. Italian Artists by Brazilian Artists (1999); Hélio Oiticica and the American Scene (1998); Luciano Fabro, 1997; Amilcar de Castro: a Retrospective (1989); and Hélio Oiticica and Lygia Clark (1986). Editorial credits include the co-authorship of Nelson Felix, 2001, and Eduardo Coimbra 2004; she has also co-edited the collections of essays on Clement Greenberg and the Critical Debate (1997) and Artists Writings (60/70’s). She edited the collections of Crítica de arte no Brasil: temáticas contemporêneas She co-edited the review Arte&Ensaios (1997-2006) and is the editor of the collection Arte +, published by Jorge Zahar Editor.
Trude Iversen, Oslo/New York
Art theoretician and a doctoral candidate in aesthetics at the University of Oslo writing on the dissertation The Aesthetic Argument. Director of UKS (Young Artists Society), Oslo, from 2001 to 2005 where she curated several exhibitions. In 2001 Iversen founded the discussion forum Institute for Art and Theory. She was founding member of the political and cultural magazine Kontur. She works as a freelance curator and writer and has published texts on art in Le Monde Diplomatique, Morgenbladet, Kontur, Klassekampen, Ny Tid in addition to various catalogues, art magazines and books such as Capital it Fails us Now (2007), ed. by Simon Sheikh, Art and Its Institutions (2006), ed. by Nina Möntmann, Noe kommer til å skje (Something is Going to Happen) (2005), ed Marit Paasche/Tone Hansen, Frameworks /Catalogue for the Nordic pavilion in Venice (2007), Lights on (2008) Astrup Fearnley Museet. She co-edited the anthology The New Administrations of Aesthetics (2007), Torpedo Press including contributions from among others Maria Lind, Gerald Raunig, Stian Grøgaard, 16Beaver Group, Carey Young.
SPONSORS
The Arts Council of Norway, Vederlagsfondet, Office for Contemporary Art Norway and the Norwegian Association of Art Societies
OSLO KUNSTFORENING
Rådhusgaten 19, N-0158 Oslo, Norway
+47 22 42 32 65
www.oslokunstforening.no
HOURS
Tirs–Fre 12–17, Lør–Søn 12–16, Mandag Stengt
For further information about the exhibition, please contact Marianne Hultman at marianne@oslokunstforening.no
DIRECTIONS
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DAGBLADET REVIEW | MULTIPLE CHOICES
Flor, Harald. Fantasiflukt og fanget kropp (Oslo: Dagbladet, Jan 20, 2008) p.38-39.
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