Marius Engh,
Pinstripes, 2008
Courtesy of Standard (Oslo), Oslo, Norway
and the artist
Brussels Biennial 1 is organized under the conceptual umbrella devised by its artistic director, Barbara Vanderlinden, in an attempt to rethink the legacy of modernity in a global context. The biennial incorporates exhibitions curated by eight contemporary art institutions. Within the exhibition curated by L'appartement 22 from Rabat, Morocco, the Norwegian curator Anne Szefer Karlsen has invited HC Gilje to exhibit the public art work Wind up bird. Marius Engh has been invited by Nicolaus Schafhausen and Florian Waldvogel to exhibit within the Witte de With Contemporary Art Center section of the biennial. The artist will exhibit Lead, follow or get the hell out of the way, a series of 14 photographs of Teufelsberg – a symbolic mark in Berlin. Among other art institutions participating in the biennial are MuHKA, Antwerp, Belgium; Drik, Images, Communication & Information Technology in Dahka, Bangladesh; and BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, in Utrecht, the Netherlands.
For media inquiries, please send an email to press@brusselsbiennial.org. For more information visit the biennial website or send an email to office@brusselsbiennial.org.
This project is also supported by 03–funding*.
Børre Sæthre,
Stealth Distortion (...must have seen it in
some teenage wet dream), 2008
Courtesy of P.S.1/MoMA, New York, USA
and the artist
Until 26 January 2009, P.S.1/MoMA presents Børre Sæthre's solo exhibition. Curated by Lia Gangitano, P.S.1 Curatorial Advisor, and entitled Børre Sæthre, the exhibition presents the artist's highly aestheticized immersive environment, in which 'anachronistically frozen in space, Sæthre's mythological taxidermy hybrids insinuate elements of surrealism, drawing from an ancient register that collides with futuristic settings'.
Matias Faldbakken and Leif Tangen have been invited by Ruba Katrib, Assistant Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, USA, to exhibit within The Possibility of an Island at MOCA from 4 December 2008 to 15 March 2009. According to the curator, the exhibition takes as a starting point the recent novel The Possibility of an Island, by Michael Houellebecq to pose existential questions in the face of a never arriving future. For The Possibility of an Island, MOCA commissioned new works from Matias Faldbakken and invited Leif Tangen to take part in the public programme of the exhibition with a talk about the process of writing the novel Phillip. The Possibility of an Island takes place at Goldman Warehouse in Miami. Among other participating artists are Claire Fontaine, Peter Coffin and Cao Fei.
Raimundas Malasauskas, curator at Artists Space in New York, USA has invited Morten Norbye Halvorsen to exhibit within Paper Exhibition, taking place at the Artists Space from 14 January to 7 March 2009. According to he curator, the exhibition will 'explore a number of modes of artistic and curatorial production dedicated to potential, speculative, imaginary virtual, etc'. Within Paper Exhibition, Morten Norbye Halvorsen will present a sound installation that draws from various sources amongst them Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation and the new autobiography of Clifford Irving Phantom Rosebuds. Among the artists exhibiting are Mario García Torres, Mariana Castilo Deball and Loris Greaud.
Henry VIII's Wives
A1 posters, part of
Tatlin's Tower,
ongoing project
As part of the artist group Henry VIII's Wives, Rachel Dagnall is currently holding a solo exhibition in a off-site location organized by Whitechapel in London, UK. As part of their ongoing project Tatlin's Tower, Henry VIII's Wives is occupying The Shop on Toynbee Street and transforming it into the foyer of Vladimir Tatlin designed and never build 400ft tower, complete with uniformed staff and a specially designed reception. The group uses the industries and services in the area to commission 'Tatlin' versions of local products that reinterpret the tower within the area, whilst also investigating the origins of local products found in the market.
Åsa Sonjasdottir have been invited by Veronica Wiman and Berin Colonu, Associate Visual Art Curator at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, to exhibit within The Gatherers: Creating Our Urban Spheres, taking place at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, USA, from 31 October 2008 to 11 January 2009. According to the curators, the exhibition 'looks at the diverse array of practitioners and their motivation for greening the urban sphere'. Åsa Sonjasdottir will be exhibiting the long-term project Potato Perspectives, in which the artist uses the potato plant as a starting point for investigations in cultural and socital relations.
Øystein Aasan has been invited by curator Fanny Gonella to exhibit within The Repetition of Sigs at Alte Fabrik in Rapperswil, Switzerland. According to the curator, the exhibition addresses 'the process of how a group becomes visible in our surrounding'. For the exhibition, Øystein Aasan developed a new project based on the campus of Cité Universitaire in Paris, France, where each house is representative of a nation. The Repetition of Sigs takes place from 25 October to 21 December 2008.
Torbjørn Rødland, Goksøyr & Martens (Toril Goksøyr and Camilla Martens), Bodil Furu and Maia Urstad are exhibiting within Disturbance – Contemporary Art from Scandinavia & South Africa, at Johannesburg Art Gallery, South Africa. Curated by Maria Fidel Regueros and Clive Kellner, Director of Johannesburg Art Gallery and a guest at OCA's International Visitor Programme, the exhibition examines the relationship that Scandinavian and South African artists have to notions of identity and place. Disturbance takes place at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, South Africa between 26 October 2008 and 1 March 2009. The project is supported by 03–funding*.
Karl Ingar Røys is taking part in the 1st Annual International Forum on Contemporary Art at the Art and Cultural Studies Laboratory (ACSL) in Yerevan, Armenia from 1 November to 15 December 2008 under the title Interdiagnosis. During the Forum, the artist presents his earlier work in relation to Armenian contemporary art and will also produce a new video.
Jan Christensen and Josefine Lyche are currently exhibiting within Up Against the Wall, at Zacheta National Gallery of Art Zacheta National Gallery of Art. The exhibition has as it starting point murals that become a pretext for a variety of different interventions on the architectural interior of the Zacheta Gallery. The artists participating in the project have been asked to engage with the space of several of Zacheta's rooms and create installations which annex the architecture in a total way by taking over the building's monumental surfaces. Up Against the Wall is on view until 25 January 2009.