Two exhibitions
dal 12/3/2009 al 16/5/2009
Segnalato da
12/3/2009
Two exhibitions
Kunstverein Hannover, Hannover
Simon Dybbroe Moller subjects 20th-century avant-garde to a subjective revision in his work. The installations, collages, films, and sculptures play with works of Minimal At and Concept Art as well as Constructivism, De Stijl or the Bauhaus and transform their conceptual strategies into narrations that are as sentimental as they are analytical. The short films, sculptures, and installations by Joao Maria Gusmao and Pedro Paiva move in the area between myth and science, and they tell of nature's magic and mysteries.
Simon Dybbroe Moller
Kompendium
Simon Dybbroe Møller subjects twentieth-century avant-garde to a subjective revision in his work. The installations, collages, films, and sculptures play with works of Minimal At and Concept Art as well as Constructivism, De Stijl or the Bauhaus and transform their conceptual strategies into narrations that are as sentimental as they are analytical. Simon Dybbroe Møller’s works are marked by a fascination with artistic models of the twentieth century which the artist appropriates. He links them with diverse references to art, design, architecture, literature or music and questions them: The associative lines in his works range from Robert Morris, Dan Flavin, Robert Matta-Clark to John Cage, Bonnie Prince Billy and the Danish author Villy Sørensen or to August Strindberg. The works are reflections of an eye-twinkling modernism that oscillate between construed and authentic art history, between original and reproduction and transfer the avant-garde of the past into a weave comprising wondrous coincidences, hidden secrets, and subjective commentaries.
Thus the section of a wall sawed out by Simon Dybbroe Møller rests on a few beer crates in such a way that it results in a minimalist artwork. The sublime, hovering impression of the sculpture Slab (platform), 1962 by Robert Morris becomes the perplexing accidental product Slap (R. Morris), 2004.
The combination of decline on an aesthetic level and reconstruction on a contentual level are recurring motifs in Møller’s works. The installation Sir Norman Reid, 2005 references Robert Morris and shows his randomly flung mirrored cube (Untitled, 1965/71); several cubes have fallen on top of each other and fragmented. As usual in Møller’s works, the essential reference can be found in the title. The Sir Norman Reid named in the title refers to the former trend-setting director of the Tate Gallery in London who was responsible for an exhibition of Robert Morris’s participatory sculptures in 1971. Due to the number of injuries suffered by visitors, the unsteady and insecure parcours had to be closed after a week.
Simon Dybbroe Møller is interested in the failures and peripheries of recent art history and combines individual fragments in order to construe new references or to lay emphasis on forgotten protagonists and bypaths. A side of modernism emerges behind the smooth, clear, and rationalist façade of abstract and conceptual art that also references Sol LeWitt in his Sentences on Conceptual Art: “Conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists.”
The exhibition in the Kunstverein Hannover will be supplemented by an exhibition simultaneously taking place in the Frankfurt Kunstverein. The entire project is subdivided into numerous chapters, of which six parts (Compendium) will be shown in Hannover and the Appendix in Frankfurt.
The structuring of the chapters and the subdivision in a Compendium and Appendix will also be reflected in the jointly produced catalog. The chapter headings selected by Simon Dybbroe Møller annotate the works gathered together in the respective chapter, providing the theme for a text on each chapter each written by various authors.
The exhibition "Compendium" continues in the exhibition "Appendix" which will be on view during the same time at the Frankfurter Kunstverein (March 27 - May 31, 2009).
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Eckpunkt: João Maria Gusmão + Pedro Paiva
About the Presence of Things
The short films, sculptures, and installations by João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva move in the area between myth and science, and they tell of nature’s magic and mysteries. The spatial combination and juxtaposition of documentaries dealing with simple, quasi scientific experiments, observations on nature, short wondrous narrations and extrasensory phenomena challenges the usual perception of the world and moves in metaphysical dimensions. The pieces contain references to alchemy and the occult, positivistic experiments and speculative philosophy as well as the Theater of the Absurd and Science Fiction literature.
The films were made on 16-mm celluloid film material, and their aesthetics and choreography combine references to early silent films with borrowings from scientific educational films from the nineteen sixties and seventies. They mostly visualize brief experiments without creating an entity between the occurrence and possible interpretations. The aesthetics of the 16-mm film convey an impression of the authenticity of the filmed events that is, however, simultaneously undermined by means of the omission of sound even when the participants are seemingly explaining their actions.
João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva transform the exhibition space into a kind of alchemistic laboratory where technologically oriented, rational search for knowledge is displaced by a mythic, phenomenal and paranormal perception. A series of films thus references the non-existing science of Abissology taken from the novel La Grand Beuverie (1938) by René Daumals. Abissology is described there as the study of non-perceivable infinity that forms a contradictory antithesis to the perceivable world. With their cinematic allegories, Gusmão and Paiva reintegrate amazement and reverence for the unexplainable into the rational present. The linking of diverse cultural and historical approaches in dealing with fundamental questions of human existence points to the origins of our culture and emphasizes the originally close link between science, philosophy, and religion.
The works of João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva are on view for the first time in Germany. In 2009, the artist duo will represent Portugal at the 53rd Venice Biennial.
Sponsors: the country of lower saxonia
the Sparkasse Hannover and the Niedersächsische Sparkassen foundation
Image: Simon Dybbroe Møller, Mass, Weight and Volume (Fallen into Place), 2008, Courtesy Francesca Minini Milano and Galerie Kamm, Berlin. Photo Agostino Osio
For further information, images as well as catalogs, please contact Katharina Klara Jung presse@kunstverein-hannover.de, phone: 0511/324594
Press conference on Thursday, March 12, 2009, 11 am
Opening on Friday, 13 March, 2009, 8 pm
Kunstverein Hannover
Sophienstraße 2 - 30159 Hannover
Opening hours:
Tue.-Sat. 12-19 h, Sundays and Holiday 11-19 h
Entrance fee: Euro 4,-/3,- (reduced)
free admission
Wednesdays after 4 pm
Sundays from 11 am