BREUNING, BÄCKSTRÖM, EINARSSON, GAMDRUP, KVIE, KVIUM, LAGOMARSINO, RØDLAND, STORCH, SUPERFLEX

It is with great pleasure that we present a selection of works by the gallery’s artists for our summer show 2012. The group show consists of works by ten artists, with a range of mediums including sculpture, video and photography. This is the first time that the works have been presented together or in the gallery itself.

The exhibition does not carry an overall theme and the works instead present themselves in a number of ways, specifically chosen in order to let the viewer discover connections and meanings. The conviction behind this choice being that an overall theme reduces the meaning of the individual works, and thereby prevents the viewer from having a nuanced experience of the art. The works are presented in an immediately incoherent instalment however the juxtaposition of the works shapes an overall theme through the visitor’s experience of the show in its entirety. Below are listed possible conceptual links and thematic traces which we wish for the viewer to interpret as and how they will.

In the show you can experience Mads Gamdrup’s large photographic work Denmark in Transition. The work is an interpretation of the representation of the Danish landscape of today. Clear landscapes are mixed with misty, indefinable ones that discuss the question of national identity and the anchoring of it in landscape.

This question of identity and its complex structure is underlined in Miriam Bäckström’s video installation Kira Carpelan. The video follows an art student, Kira Carpelan, and her preparations for a hypothetical exhibition by the artist Bäckström – an exhibition commissioned by Bäckström herself. Behind the camera is the real Bäckström.

Olaf Breuning’s photographs of mysterious and grotesque persons also closely relate to the theme of staged identity. Breuning’s portraits contain parallels to Michael Kvium’s performance videos Black and White where we see monstrous characters performing comic, macabre and meaningless acts.

In the work FREE BEER/COUNTER GAME STRATEGIES/DISTRIBUTION MACHINE by SUPERFLEX it is the audience who obtain a false identity as they can assume the role of the owner of either a commercial or micro brewing company. The game exceeds the limitations of the gallery space and comments on the actual terms of the market in a playful and humorous manner.

This chain of possible connections and meanings can be continued and negotiated by the viewer through their interactions with the show.