16/1/2004
Surasi Kusolwong
Rooseum, Malmo
Born and living in Thailand, Kusolwong is one of the leading artists to emerge from the extension of the contemporary art field beyond its Western boundaries over the last 10 years. His work draws on Thai and Western art traditions as well as recent cultural and social changes in both situations. A substantial corpus of works by Kusolwong, No Conclusion (Time Is The Answer) offers testimony to the many-layered approaches in the artist's work.
No Conclusion (Time Is The Answer)
Opening 17 January 2004, 7 - 9pm, artists talk 6pm
Rooseum is delighted to have the opportunity to present Surasi Kusolwong's
first one-person show in Europe, No Conclusion (Time Is The Answer). Born
and living in Thailand, Kusolwong is one of the leading artists to emerge
from the extension of the contemporary art field beyond its Western
boundaries over the last 10 years. His work draws on Thai and Western art
traditions as well as recent cultural and social changes in both
situations.
For this first major solo-exhibition, Kusolwong will show new and existing
works in a set up that partly suggests an indoor city. The exhibition
includes a new version of his famous Emotional Machine, a VW Beetle turned
upside down and converted into a swing that visitors can use. He will also
stage a new 10 SEK market full of plastic Thai products that will be sold
during the opening as 'a retail performance with music action'. New works
will include a scaffold stage for photos and performances and an electric
scooter tour of a re-made modern classic sculpture by Richard Serra. A
number of smaller sculptures and photographs will also be shown.
Kusolwong's work bears a close relationship to western modernism. He draws
on a stock of European and North American modernist aesthetics in ways
that could be interpreted as homage to western success and appears to be
done in a spirit of celebration. Yet by appro-priating and altering genres
of modernist aesthetics he translates the legacy of the Western canon into
his own language. Objects are given new functions (or their function is
re-configured in the case of design products), thereby undermining the
usually distinct categories of utility and fine art. The works seem to
question the necessity and appropriate-ness of such meanings in a global
economic and cultural context.
The artist is also deeply concerned with the experience of the visitor,
seeking a different kind of engagement than the normally passive
consumption of images in a museum. Many of the works require direct
participation in order to fully grasp their intention, while others are
activated by performers, including the artist himself. Another important
element of his work is the act of hospitality, inspired by the mixing of
European and Asian cultural expectation.
By presenting a substantial corpus of works by Kusolwong, No Conclusion
(Time Is The Answer) offers testimony to the many-layered approaches in
the artist's work. His works move freely between analysis and experience,
theory and physical presence, and bring about a sense of open-endedness
and indeterminacy. The exhibition is an invitation to enjoy moments of
entertainment and pleasurable situations that points beyond the here and
now.
Mark Lewis
The Brass Rail
Micro Cinema, 17 January - 15 February 2004
In June 2003 the shooting of Mark Lewis' new film, The Brass Rail, took
place at Rooseum. Now the finished work can be seen in Rooseum's Micro
Cinema. The collaboration with Mark Lewis started in March 2003 when
Rooseum presented his work, Imitation of Life (2002), and continued with
the production of The Brass Rail, recorded on super-35mm film. Throughout
the Spring we focused on projects on art and film in the programme Rooseum
Universal Studios. We concluded this intense period by inviting our
audience to follow the production of The Brass Rail, and introduced for
the first time publically our main exhibition space as a production site.
The aim with this project was twofold, to support the artist in the
production of a new work and to invite our audience to gain access to the
working processes through which a film is made.
The Brass Rail takes its location from a 'lap dancing' bar in Toronto,
where we see one of the waitresses, Monique, serving, charging for the
drinks and waiting for the evening to end. But the main focus for Mark
Lewis in this work is the cinematic push-pull effect. This is known to
many through Hitchcock's use of it in films like Vertigo. The effect is
created by combining a zoom shot, which moves towards the subject and a
counter-prevailing tracking shot, which moves back from the subject. Lewis
uses this distortion effect to investigate how two different times appear
to occur simultaneously in one image. Lewis also takes his inspiration
from painting and portraiture and in particular works that attempt to
inscribe an anamorphic effect suggesting temporal displacement, for
example in Manet's Bar at the Folies-Bergere. In The Brass Rail Lewis
continues his ongoing investigation of how to use the filmic space as a
place for extending and exploring the genre of painting.
The Brass Rail has been supported by: Sala Rekalde, Bilbao; Musee d'Art
Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg; Department of Foreign Affairs and
International Trade of Canada; British Council.
Fredrik Roos Artist fund, the holder of the grant 2003:
Ylva Westerlund
Open Forum, 17 januari - 21 mars
Ylva Westerlund has been granted the Fredrik Roos Artist fund award 2003
for her skillfulness in combining intelligent and witty thoughts on
complex social issues with a sensual and unexpected visual form. Rooseum
has the pleasure of, in conjunction with the distribution of the award,
showing her work Exercises in Triangulation in the Open Forum.
Ylva Westerlund lives in Malmo and ended her studies at the Malmo Art
Academy in spring 2003. She mainly works with video, installation and
drawing. In her works she keeps coming back to a theme drawing from her
own experiences and her relationship with political ideologies: "My not
entirely uncomplicated relationship with the Left", as she puts it. In the
video Exercises in Triangulation Ylva Westerlund starts from a scientific
method of putting light on the political rhetoric from a new perspective.
The movie describes incompatible ideas being put together and creating a
new, third variation. The theories are introduced very matter-of-factly in
the video, which reminds of a scientific presentation. But the emblem of
the constructed sender, which is exposed, to raise our doubts and make us
question things questions the objectiveness of the movie.
For further information please contact Rooseum, +46 40 12 17 16
Rooseum Center for Contemporary Art
Gasverksgatan 22
Box 4097
203 12 Malmo, Sweden
Phone +46 (0) 40 12 17 16
Fax +46 (0) 40 30 45 61