Mats Hjelm
dal 17/9/2002 al 29/9/2002
Segnalato da
Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation
17/9/2002
Mats Hjelm
Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Stockholm
Kap Atlantis. Artist talk Wednesday 18th September, 7 p.m.Kap Atlantis is the final instalment of a trilogy, the previous two being White Flight (1997) and Man to Man (2000), earlier showed at Index. The exhibition title derives from Harry Martinson's epic Aniara, where Kap Atlantis is an abandoned place on earth.
Kap Atlantis
Artist talk Wednesday 18th September, 7 p.m
Kap Atlantis is the final instalment of a trilogy, the previous two being
White
Flight (1997) and Man to Man (2000), earlier showed at
Index. The exhibition
title derives from Harry Martinson's epic Aniara, where
Kap Atlantis is an
abandoned place on earth.
All parts of the trilogy portray the visual structures of
the memory, a rhythmic
and non-chronological stream of images placing equal
emphasis on the
personal as well as the collective, historical
consciousness. Recurring
themes are issues such as power, masculinity and violence.
Starting with
his own relationship to his father, whose documentary
films formed the
basis of both the previous two works, Mats Hjelm discusses
men's legacy to
each other. In Kap Atlantis, the majority of the footage
is new and these
issues regarding a father's legacy to his son take on an
almost existential,
religious meaning. The work refers to Christianity as well
as Islam. The
catastrophe of 11th of September in New York last year is
also referred to,
although not directly portrayed, as well as the atmosphere
of hate and fear
that followed as a consequence. They make a contemporary
parallel to the
apocalyptic atmosphere created by the atomic bomb that
characterised the
late 50s, the time when Mats Hjelm was born and Harry
Martinson wrote
Aniara. This era is intensively present in all parts of
the trilogy, in Kap Atlantis
expressed for instance through Swedish actor Ulf Palme's
classical reading
of passages from Aniara. The past and the contemporary
become one and
the work seems to question the chronology of history
itself.
Welcome!
Kap Atlantis is a 3-channel DVD installation, continuously
looped through the gallery's
opening hours. Mats Hjelm's previous works, White Flight
and Man to Man will also be
accessible for viewing.
Our special thanks to Jesper Johansson, whose assistance
was invaluable during the
production of Kap Atlantis.
This exhibition is part of XPOSEPTEMBER - Stockholm's
Fotofestival.
28 August  29 September 2002
Index exhibition programme is managed by Andreas Gedin,
Helena Holmberg, Mats
Stjernstedt and Niklas Östholm.
Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation
St Paulsgatan 3, Stockholm, Sweden
tel: 08-640 94 92, 08-640 60 69