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8/3/2012

Curtain Callers

Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin

The Barbara Thumm Gallery is pleased to present the fourth exhibition by Swedish artist Ann-Sofi Sidén, this time in collaboration with American composer Jonathan Bepler.

Curtain Callers was recorded at The Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm. This large-scale production is now presented in two parts: a film, Curtain Callers, and a 5-channel video installation, Curtain Callers (Entracte), to be shown together with a photo panorama and diptychs in Galerie Barbra Thumm.

Curtain Callers examines the contemporary institutional theatre from within. The material is drawn from a wealth of recorded images and sounds, and reaches into the very core of fiction building and its ongoing processes, tracing the fleeting moment of release in the rehearsed ritual between the audience and the stage. The production included the staging of 600 choir singers serving as the theatre audience whose voices constitute a vital part of the musical score for both the film and the installation.

Curtain Callers offers a complexity, thematically, formally and spatially that can also be found in some of Sidén’s earlier works. The exploration and invention of characters and fictional identities can be found in the films about the Queen of Mud(QM), her own alter ego. Her extended and detailed exploration of spatial dichotomies also comes to mind, with their self-contained worlds and the inherent hierarchies molding the people who inhabit them. In 3 MPH (From Horse To Rocket), Sidén took upon the identity of an old-time explorer riding through Texas, portraying a social, cultural and geographic part of the US while commenting on today’s ever faster-running world. This particularly unique way of weaving video and still images in the multi-channel panorama was invented by Sidén during the post-production stage of 3 MPH, and is now further refined for this last work, Curtain Callers, unfolding the inside of a theatre, a house of fiction building, slicing between the audience and the backstage. The visual image is coupled with Jonathan Bepler’s 360-degree surround sound musical score, striking a delicate balance between incidental sound and music, lingering and re-occurring around you while new scenes unfold in the many stories that make up the national stage’s daily routines where Ingemar Bergman began and ended his career.

Curtain Callers is produced by Mobile Art Productions (MAP), and was last shown in January 2012 in Gothenburg, Sweden in conjunction with the Göteborg International Film Festival. In March 2012, the book Curtain Callers will be published by the newly established publishing house Art & Theory Publishing. The book is designed by Stefania Malmsten and includes texts by Jörg Heiser, Ann-Sofi Sidén and an interview with the artists by Magdalena Malm.

Sidén has gained international recognition for her highly charged, complex video installations. She has shown her work at The Venice Bienale, São Paolo Bienale, Carnegie International (Pittburgh), Musee d’Art Modern de LaVille de Paris, The Hayward Gallery (London) and the Moderna Museet (Stockholm). In 2012 Ann-Sofi Sidén was awarded with the Dagens Nyheters Culture prize 2011 in the category of fine arts.

Her work is present in renowned international public and private collections such as the KIASMA (Helsinki), the Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall, MOCA North Miami, the Moderna Museet (Stockholm), Sammlung Goetz (Munich) or the Winterthur Museum (Switzerland). Ann-Sofi Sidén came to Berlin as an artist-in-residence of the DAAD program in 2001/2002. She lives and works in Stockholm.

Jonathan Bepler has composed music for film, dance and his own audio installations. He is best known for his compositions for Mathew Barneys Cremaster films. Sidén and Bepler collaborated as early as 1997 in the 35-mm film QM, I Think I Call Her QM.

In the course of the exhibition Curtain Callers take place on Saturday, March 17, 2012 a book presentation with video-screening and also a talk with Ann-Sofi Sidén, Jonathan Bepler, Jörg Heiser (editor in chief, Frieze magazin) and Anna Eriksson (publisher of the book Curtain Callers) as a member event at Soho House Berlin. There are some additonal places availble.

Image: Curtain Callers video still, 2011. 1 Channel Full HD video, 5.1 Surround sound, Running time: 20 min. Photo: Hans Johnansson. Courtesy Galerie Barbara Thumm

For more information:
artpress – Ute Weingarten Elisabethkirchstr. 15, 10115 Berlin Fon + 49 30 219618-43 artpress@uteweingarten.de

Opening: Friday, 09 March, 7 - 9 pm

Galerie Barbara Thumm
Markgrafenstrasse 68 D - 10969 Berlin
Opening hours:
tue-sa 11 am to 6 pm

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