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15/9/2009

Life Forms

Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm

The autumn’s major exhibition, Life Forms, invites us to a discussion about how nature is viewed in contemporary art. The exhibition brings together 11 noted, internationally active artists who depict the relationship between nature and culture, the artificial and the organic, art and landscape. The exhibition includes a series of seminars, a film programme and an extensive anthology.

In a time of environmental pollution and climate change, Life Forms is intended to reveal the way contemporary art imagine our life on earth. Is it an unmitigated apocalyptic landscape, trashed and exploited, that contemporary art travels through? Or is there, in art, room for new utopias, in which art can contribute to the discovery of new life forms? A desire to find a way back to an imagined, more original state, or does it present images of completely new worlds and life forms in which the centre stage is not occupied by human beings?

Life Forms has links with the land art and installation art of the 60s and 70s. The participating artists and their predecessors share an interest in the time spans of the universe, the Earth’s geological movements and the slow development and destruction of organisms. The exhibition includes painting, drawing, installation, photography, video and large-scale sculpture. On display are Charles Avery’s project The Islanders, in which the artist has created his own world of unique flora and fauna, and Katie Paterson’s map of the 27,000 dead stars that people have discovered in the universe. Henrik Håkansson’s hundreds of orchids cover the Konsthall from floor to ceiling. There is also a contribution from Jani Ruscica, whose video installation samples sounds made by bats with beatboxers from New York.

In the exhibition architecture Klas Ruin and Ola Broms Wessel from the Spridd architectural practice have made a sun screen powered by solar energy. The heat of the sun unfurls a balloon of spinnaker cloth that, when needed, will cover the Konsthall’s southern façade. The sun’s powers visibly influence the exhibition’s architecture and give it a living, moving aspect that responds to the fluctuations of the day and to the intensity of the sun.

Curator Sara Arrhenius

Participating artists:
Micol Assaël, Charles Avery, Rosa Barba, Andreas Eriksson, Ane Graff, Tue Greenfort, Henrik Håkansson, Helen Mirra, Katie Paterson, Jani Ruscica and Tomas Saraceno.

Film programme:
Bruce Conner, Nancy Holt, Gordon Matta-Clark, Ana Mendieta and Robert Smithson.

Publication:
The exhibition is accompanied by the production, in collaboration with publishers Albert Bonniers Förlag, of an extensive anthology, the contributors being Swedish and international authors, theorists and the participating artists. Contributors: Donna J. Haraway, Lars Jakobson, Åsa-Maria Kraft, Tuija Nieminen Kristofersson, Vladimir Nabokov, Thomas Pynchon, W.G. Sebald and Robert Smithson. Editors: Sara Arrhenius and Magnus Bergh.

Programme:
21 Oct, 6 pm Transformation, Decay and Increasing Disorder
With artist Andreas Eriksson, publisher Magnus Berg and writers Tuija Nieminen Kristofersson and Åsa Maria Kraft among others
4 Nov, 6 pm Possible Impossible Worlds
With artist Tue Greenfort and writer Lars Jakobson among others
11 Nov, 6 pm To Retrieve New Places
With director Sara Arrhenius and artist Rosa Barba among others

The Life Forms exhibition is supported by Clarion Sign, British Council, The Danish Arts Council, Finlandsinstitutet, FRAME Finnish Fund for Art Exchange, Italienska Kulturinstitutet, OCA The Office for Contemporary Art Norway.

Image: Micol Assael, Maly Semyachek, 2009. Courtesy of Johann König

For further information, please contact:
Metta Flensburg, Press Officer Bonniers Konsthall
+46-8-7364266, +46-70-2800413 metta.flensburg@bonnierskonsthall.se

Bonniers Konsthall
Torsgatan 19, SE-113 90 Stockholm, Sweden
Opening hours
Wednesday - Friday 12 pm - 7 pm
Saturday - Sunday: 12 pm - 5 pm
Entrance fees
Entrance fee: SEK 60
Students: SEK 40
Pensioners: SEK 40
Membership: SEK 120
Children and youth under 18, free entrance
Art students with ID, free entrance
Guests to the café only, free entrance

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