Annika Larsson
dal 2/3/2004 al 25/4/2004
Segnalato da
2/3/2004
Annika Larsson
Kunsthalle Nurnberg, Nuremberg
In her first solo museum presentation in Germany, Annika Larsson who was born in Stockholm in 1972 is showing a condensed selection of the video installations she has produced since 1999.
In her first solo museum presentation in Germany, Annika Larsson who was born in Stockholm in 1972 is showing a condensed selection of the video installations she has produced since 1999.
The artist's interests lie in the casual but expressive male gestures and rituals, body-language behavioural patterns through which hierarchical and social power structures emerge. The protagonists in Larsson's videos do not talk, they communicate through looks, gestures, poses, and actions. In these film sequences, enigmatic relationships and stories unfold between exclusively male players; a tennis match without a ball (40:15), an execution of almost religious appearance without a drop of blood (D.I.E.), a naked man on the beach who is both a passive play thing and an object of desire (Pink Ball).
In Annika Larsson's large-format video projections we see how the images of latent threat and violence develop into underlying sexual tension whose form take on the patterns of visual seduction familiar to us from Hollywood films, fashion photography, advertising and soft porn. But the men we see in suits, sports apparel, leisurewear or uniform are distinctly unspectacular examples of seductive masculinity. We can only derive their identity and social position from their clothes, gestures, and glances, the body language they use emerges as a fragile, socially standardized construct quite bare of individual characteristics.
The voyeuristic eye of the camera zooms right up to the men's bodies, turning them into sexualised objects, lending them a monumental yet fragmentary character. Sudden changes of scene repeatedly interrupt the narrative quite abruptly, while the slow-motion replay of the videotape overstretches time and so dramatises events, as do the electronic soundtracks of Tobias Bernstrup that lend the video installations a rhythmic structure.
A 96-page catalogue has been produced in co-operation with the Museum für Gegenwartskunst Basel with contributions by Philipp Kaiser and Abigail Solomon-Godeau (Merian Verlag) and costs 26 euros.
Opens: Wednesday, 3 March, 7 pm
Kunsthalle Nürnberg
Lorenzer Straße 32,
D- 90402 Nürnberg
Phone: ++49 (0)911 - 231 2403/2853
Telefax: ++49 (0)911 - 231 3721