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14/11/2001

Ann-Sofi Siden

Christine Koenig Galerie, Wien

fideicommissum

Ann-Sofi Sidén, born in Stockholm 1962, living in New York and Berlin (DAAD 2001). Studied at art academies in Stockholm, Maine and Berlin in the Eighties. Her work was shown a.o.: 1994 P.S.1, New York; 1996 Malmö Museum; 1997 Steirischer Herbst, Graz; 1998 XXIV Bienal de Sao Paulo; Manifesta 2, Luxembourg; 1999 dAPERTutto, Biennale di Venezia; Kunstverein München; Carnegie International, Pittsburgh; Secession Vienna; 2000 South London Gallery; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; 2001 Berlin Biennale; 2002 Hayward Gallery, London.

In QM, I think I call her QM, Ann-Sofi Sidén plays the role of a strange, lizardlike, prehistoric creature, a mute female being covered with mud, found under the bed of a paranoid psychiatrist. Vulnerability, surveillance, controll, madness, social and collective conscience are recurrent themes in Sidén´s work. To a great extent also in her multi-layered video-installation Warte Mal!, where the artist uses the language of the documentary to investigate prostitution and human exploitation.

For the new exhibition in the gallery, Ann-Sofi Sidén created another biographical situation for her bronze figure fidei commissum, first being installed in the park of Wanas Castle in Southern Sweden, a self-portrait squatting and urinating, with the micturition making it work as a fountain.

"It upends a long trail of associations, for instance how many other sculptural figures, almost always male, you´ve seen similarly urinating in various parks and gardens through the years. This is a humorous inversion, but an extremely effective one. (...) Peeing marks the space territorially, as animals do, but so too does Sidén´s crouching image, and by extension it infiltrates a culturewide, or worldwide, situation in which men in general occupy hugely skewed proportions of public space. (...) There is an interesting progression, caught on videos, as the figure is transported and installed. It is lifted up by its thighs, carried, touched, moved, adjusted, and eventually installed in its proper crouching perch. Workers are not entirely uncomfortable, but then neither are they entirely at ease. That´s probably a pretty good description of what happens for the audience with the finished piece, which is simultaneously inviting and disconcerting, weird and familiar. This female fountain with its trickling water is beautiful in its way, lulling, and quietly meditative."

CHRISTINE KÖNIG GALLERY
Schleifmühlgasse 1A
1040 Vienna
Tel: 00431-585 74 74

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