A group exhibition showing various perspectives regarding the process of change in urban spaces and the points of demarcation between the private and the public space. The three artists participating are Lara Almarcegui, Per Hasselberg and Jozef Robakowski.
Lara Almarcegui, Per Hasselberg and Józef Robakowski
Index presents Changing Places, a group exhibition showing various
perspectives regarding the process of change in urban spaces and the points
of demarcation between the private and the public space. The three artists
participating are Lara Almarcegui (Spain / Netherlands), Per Hasselberg
(Sweden) and Józef Robakowski (Poland). With differing motives they observe,
document and approach environments that are undergoing completely real
transformations, as a consequence of politic, social or economic change.
In Lara Almarcegui's work Amsterdam Wastelands Map (1999), originally
produced for Bureau Amsterdam, the artist turns her attention to public
spaces in Amsterdam that do not correspond to any construction or planning.
In a way they are non-places, in continual transformation, and can suddenly
cease to exist at all. These places can be described as a kind of
transitional space, according to two references: the first as a space
between another space, and as processes between what they were and what they
are going to be. Index shows the guide that is the end result of
Almarcegui's observations, as well as a slide show featuring the areas.
Per Hasselberg shows a work produced especially for this Index exhibition.
It could be said that the two lines of investigation of this work come
together near the victory column in Berlin's Tiergarten. Or more
specifically at Das Schwedenhaus from the Interbau-57 exhibition, designed
by architect Fritz Jaenecke, and the Swedish Embassy's fallout bunker, which
construction was supervised by engineer Erik Nygren. Hasselberg initiates
his investigation through places he has a personal relationship to: an
apartment in Lilla Essingen, Stockholm, which both he and Nygren have lived
in, as well as Hasselberg's current apartment in Sorgenfri, Malmö, designed
by Jaenecke. The research then leads Hasselberg to Berlin and Stockholm. The
artist's role here is to weave together the various threads connecting
people as well as places. Through text and images, as well as a taped
interview, these relationships are revealed and presented at Index.
In Józef Robakowski's 19 minute video From My Window (1978-99) the artist
observes events and people in the public space, as seen from his window,
high up in a large apartment building in Lodz, Poland. With a warm and
humorous voice-over, he describes his neighbours and their regular habits.
As the years pass, apparently little changes, but larger transformations do
occur. The 1st May parade suddenly changes direction one year in the early
80s, from left to right, to from right to left. The parking lot outside the
building transforms into a bus station and gradually into a construction
site. A recurring theme in the film is the continual social and ideological
changes taking place in society.
You are warmly welcome!
Opening, Wednesday 8 May, 5 Â 8 p.m.
Press view, Wednesday 8 May, 1 p.m.
open: tuesday-sunday 12-4 pm
Index's exhibition programme is managed by Andreas Gedin, Helena Holmberg,
Mats Stjernstedt and Niklas Östholm.
Index- The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation
S:t Paulsgatan 3, Box 151 52, 104 65 Stockholm
tel: #468640 94 92, #468640 60 69