Gabriela Fridriksdottir
dal 10/6/2006 al 17/6/2006
Segnalato da
10/6/2006
Gabriela Fridriksdottir
Migros Museum, Zurich
The drawings, sculptures, music experiments and videos of the Icelandic artist create a microcosm tending toward Surrealism, which is peopled by hybrid and sexually charged creatures who can be read as metaphors for melancholy and excess.
Inside the Core
Preview Part 1: 11 - 18 June 2006
Art Basel Special Reception: Sunday, 11 June 2006, 7pm Press conference: Friday, 23 June 2006, 10.30am (or by arrangement)
Opening "Parts1 & 2": Friday, 23 June 2006, 6pm
Icelandic artist Gabriela Frioriksdottir’s (*1971) drawings, sculptures, music experiments and videos create a microcosm tending towards Surrealism, peopled with hybrid and sexually charged beings that can be read as metaphors for melancholy and excess. Alongside the earlier work "Versations/Tetralogi'a" the artist will present "Inside the Core", a room installation specially produced for the migros museum fur gegenwartskunst.
Gabri'ela Frioriksdottir’s video works are distinguished by a meditative narrative structure, which is fed by Nordic sagas, and breaks with rational logic. Her creative drive has been influenced by a compulsion to investigate the irrational and mysterious, and this is reflected in her sculptures. Her tendency to experiment with ephemeral materials leans to the tradition of Dieter Roth, who has exercised a great influence on art production in Iceland. Thus one can find in her work mud, hay and bread dough along with fur, plaster and pieces of wood.
In the work "Versations/Tetralogi'a", first exhibited at the Venice-Biennial 2005, the artist creates a complex, closed system of symbols which not only link various media, but also combine and compose anew the most varied cultural, religious and psychic landscapes. To form a dialectic, Frioriksdottir uses so-called Versation, a rhetorical stylistic device that has emerged specifically from Icelandic cultural circles and, unlike the monologue, distinctly involves listeners who, though silent, do not remain passive.
The core work of four videos serves as a navigation system through this nebulous landscape, which in each case is named according to the points on the compass. Numbers do not occur in Frioriksdottir’s work simply by coincidence; their mysticism and cultural meaning have been fully investigated. Hence the number four is not only representative of the four elements, the four seasons or the four medieval attributions of the earthly, but it also surfaces in C. G. Jung’s psychoanalytical writings: the four pillars upon which Jung categorised human consciousness were feeling, thought, perception and memory.
In her works, Gabri'ela Frioriksdottir has frequently collaborated with people from her own close-knit circle. The music for each of her four videos was composed by Bjork Guomundsdottir, Borgar por Magnason, Daniel Agust Haraldsson and JOnas Sen, based on her own written, fragmentary melody. Together with the dancer Erna Omarsdottir, internationally renowned for her "Tremble Dance", Bjork Guomundsdottir plays a major role in the video "North", as a demon-bearing Venus.
Her new complex of work "Inside the Core", assembled from film, drawings and sculptures has as its dominant feature the number eight, but it is also to be read as a reflection on this number. The film is constructed of eight major scenes, each linked to one bridging sequence forming the closed shape of a circle, which presents, in reduced form, the number eight.
In each scene, the film’s protagonists, a girl and a baker, symbol of the creator, negotiate an element from Frioriksdottir’s material cosmos. While the drawings serve as sketches for the work, the displayed sculptures could be described as eruptions from its filmic core, to the artist’s personal periodic table. Here Frioriksdottir investigates the duality principle, which oscillates between order and chaos, the confused interior and the clean, neat exterior, intense passion and heavy melancholy.
!PERFORMANCE MARC CAMILLE CHAIMOWICZ!
On Sunday 11 June at 6pm Marc Camille Chaimowicz will present one of his rare performances in the migros museum fur gegenwartskunst. Marc Camille Chaimowicz's installations and performances of the early 1970s, which revolved around the personal and intimate, situated him within a new generation of artists who distanced themselves from the artistic discourse prevailing at the time. He linked various media, such as sculpture, photography or drawing into complex installations that have an inherently anachronistic tone. In recent years Chaimowicz who has an important position in art history, has been rediscovered as a vital role model for a younger generation of artists.
!CHILDREN’S - WORKSHOPS!
Part of the Zurich Holiday Pass offer (Zurcher Ferienpass): Dive into the enchanted saga world of the artist Gabriela Frioriksdottir and work with various materials: 17/18/19 July, 10am-12.30pm.
Two day workshop in collaboration with Daros Exhibitions: 20/21 July or 24/25 July, each 10am-12.30pm. Applications via Holiday
Pass office: ferienpass@gz-zh.ch. Information from: brigitmeier@bluewin.ch
The exhibition is supported by cia.is - Center for Icelandic Art
Public Guided Tours: Sundays, 18 and 25 June, 9 July and 13 August, 3pm, as well as Thursday 6 July, 6.30pm
Opening Hours: Tue/Wed/Fri: Midday-6pm, Thu: Midday-8pm, Sat/Sun 11am-5pm. On 25 May the museum will be open 11am-5pm
Migros museum fur gegenwartskunst
Limmatstrasse 270 - Zurich