Norwegian artists Abroad

OCA International — In Brief
Norwegian Artists and Curators Abroad
January 2008
Selected International Venues

Biennials

Gardar Eide Einarsson to be included within the upcoming Whitney Biennial 2008, NY, NY, USA
Open: 6 March–1 June 2008
Press preview: 4 March 2008
Curators: Shamim Momim and Henriette Huldisch

The curatorial team of Shamim Momim, Associate Curator at the Whitney, and Henriette Huldisch, Assistant Curator at the Whitney, have selected Gardar Eide Einarsson among 80 other artists to participate in the 2008 Whitney Biennial scheduled to open to the public in NYC 6 March 2008. The exhibition which runs through 1 June is noted as the Whitney's "signature exhibition as well as the most important survey of the state of contemporary art in the United States today." Other artists included within next year's Biennial include Rita Ackermann, Carol Bove, Coco Fusco, Gang Gang Dance, Rachael Harrison, Ellen Harvey, Mary Heilmann, Karen Kliminick, Louise Lawler, Spike Lee, Lucky Dragons, Corey McCorkle, Rodney McMillan, Seth Price, Frances Starck, Mungo Thomson, James Welling, among others. Tickets for the 2008 Biennial go on sale in February 2008 and are available on www.whitney.org.

Pushwagner to be included within the upcoming 5^th berlin biennial for contemporary art, Berlin, Germany
Open: 5 April–15 June 2008
Press preview: 3 April 2008
Professional Preview: 4 April 2008
Curatorial team: Adam Szymczyk and Elena Filipovic

Starting on April 5 2008, the 5^th berlin biennial for contemporary art divides its time between day and night. Venturing into different areas of Berlin and addressing the past and current history of the once-divided city, the 5^th berlin biennial will bring together many recent and new artworks that have been chosen or conceived to respond to the spaces in which they are displayed.

During the day, the works of over forty artists will be on view at three main venues: the margarine-factory-turned-art-space of the KW Institute for Contemporary Art founded in 1991 in former East Berlin, the iconic glas hall of Mies van der Rohe's modernist Neue Nationalgalerie, and one outdoor location — an area of more than sixty weed-filled empty lots lining the former Berlin Wall between the districts of Mitte and Kreuzberg, and recently known under the name Skulpturenpark Berlin_Zentrum. An additional venue, the Schinkel Pavillon, will host a series of alternating, artist-curated solo exhibitions of more obscure historic figures from the world of art, architecture, and design.

During the night, and over the entire duration of the 5^th berlin biennial, every sundown will initiate audiences into lectures, performances, workshops, concerts, special film screenings, field trips, and other nocturnal acts held in locations spread throughout the city. Titled Mes nuits sont plus belles que vos jours, this discursive and performative pendant to the artworks on display by day allows over sixty artists and other thinkers the possibility of sharing their knowledge with audiences and experimenting with conventional artistic forms.

The accreditation form for the press conference and the professional preview can be downloaded here.

The Participation of AiPotu, Lene Berg, Annie Anawana Haloba Hobøl and Pushwagner and special projects by Vibeke Tandberg and Matias Faldbakken, in the 16^thBiennale of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
Open: 18 June–7 September 2008
Curator: Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev

The 2008 Biennale of Sydney as curated by its Artistic Director, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev entitled Revolutions — Forms that Turn will include a presentation of approximately 80 artists from 1913 to today. According to Christov-Bakargiev, the "exhibition will navigate in different ways artists have revolutionized contemporary art. It will explore rotating, turning upside down, shifting points of view, revolving, mirroring and reversing as formal devices, as well as charting their broader aesthetic, psychological, psychoanalytic and indirectly radical and political perspectives." Among those artists selected — aiPotu, Lene Berg, Annie Anawana Haloba Hobol, and Pushwagner, in addition to important historical works from the collection of Erling Neby in Oslo — among them works by Jesus Rafael Soto and Victor Vasarely. Although included in the previous Sydney biennale, the artistic director has also invited artists Vibeke Tandberg and Matias Faldbakken to create special projects in conjunction with the formal exhibition. The 2008 Biennale of Sydney will be held from 18 June–7 September 2008, and has been supported with a grant from OCA's International Support Programme. A portion of this grant is provided by 03–funding. For further developing information, please refer to www.biennaleofsydney.com.au, or contact info@oca.no.

Solo Exhibitions

Gardar Eide Einarsson at Centre D'Art Contemporain Genève
25 January–16 March 2008

Centre D'Art Contemporain Genève holds the first solo exhibition of work by Gardar Eide Einarsson in Switzerland from 25 January through 16 March, 2008. The exhibition, co-produced with the Frankfurter Kunstverein, is curated by Katya García-Antón. García-Antón writes: "The theatrical vocation of the artist's practice reveals correspondence, art historically speaking, to modernity's crisis with the social".
Preview 24 January. Please contact presse@centre.ch for further information.

Camilla Løw at Dundee Contemporary Arts
1 February–31 March 2008

Straight Letters marks the first solo exhibition by the Norwegian artist Camilla Løw which is scheduled to open at Dundee Contemporary Arts in Scotland in February 2008. The exhibition, curated by the DCA's Deputy Director Judith Winter will be accompanied by a publication with texts by Michael Archer and Sarah Lowndes.

P.S.1/MoMA will host a solo project by Børre Sæthre scheduled to open in NYC in September 2008. The exhibition curated by Lia Gangitano, Curatorial Advisor to P.S.1/MoMA, will include the artist's various installations created specifically for his recent show under the title For Someone Who Nearly Died but Survived at the Bergen Kunsthall, Norway that evoke hybrid spaces reflecting upon the artist's own fantasies, confessions rendered in morphed interiors.

Karl Ingar Røys participates in a solo project entitled Would-be Immigrants Must Watch Kiss Video at the Het Wilde Weten in Rotterdam in Holland. The exhibition curated by Kim Bouvy opened on 17 January and run through 15 April, 2008. The artist is invited by Kim Bouvy from Het Wilde Weten to discuss the initiative of the Dutch Immigrant Authorities to use video-tests in order to implement common cultural reference points for people who wish to settle in Holland. This project is a continuation of Røys' earlier work entitled Erna's Video whereby the artist refers to the documentary format to focus in on how media is politically used by Norwegian politicians with the purpose to dissuade asylum seekers from entering into the country.

Marthe Thorshaug has been invited by the Comanche Nation and the film department of the Cameron University to screen the recently produced film, Comancheria, (2007) at the Comanche National Museum in Lawton, Oklahoma. The screenings take place from 19 January through 3 February, 2008. The film is a fiction film starring Comanche Indians in Oklahoma and combines documentary with fictional elements drawn from the film genre of Westerns and Roadmovies.

Group Exhibitions

The Swiss Institute in New York launches its new project space STUDIO 495, to offer the opportunity of a more spontaneous approach to curating. The first show, Good News for People Who Love Bad News, scheduled to 13 February–22 March 2008, brings together an international group of artists; Fia Backström, Jonathan Horowitz, Scott King, Germaine Kruip, Malcom McLaren, David Perry, Vivienne Westwood and Norwegian artist Ida Ekblad. Selected works are hung in pairs and confront each other in a provocative way. Juxtaposition is rooted in the Art Historical practice of formal comparison, which Heinrich Wölfflin popularized in his Principles of Art History, 1915. The exhibition is curated by Gianni Jetzer.

Stefan Schröder participates in Über Tage_07, which is a site specific project, reflecting urban landscape development and site specific interventions after several decades of coalmining activities in the former East-German region of Sachsen. The project opened 1 September 2007, and will expand into the summer of 2008. The project is curated by Susanne Altmann.

Kjersti Sundland participates in the exhibition, Rendering Video, at TICA, Center for contemporary Art in Albania from 31 January through 16 February. The exhibition, curatored by Alessandra Pioselli, Lecturer at the History of Contemporary Art at the Arts Academy in Bergamo, presents the work by Sundland entitled Hollow Void. The participation is supported with funds from 03*.

Kjersti Andvig has been invited to present her year long project entitled Knitting and Death Penalty at the non-profit Triangle Marseille at La Friche Belle de Mai in Marseille. Curated by Dorothee Dupuis, Andvig's project, which opens in March 2008, tracks the correspondence both written and visual between the artist and a convicted prisoner on Death Row in Texas.

Anne Senstad participates in a site specific project entitled The Light House through 8 March, 2008. The project has been commissioned by KK Projects, an initiative based in the st. Roch neighborhood of New Orleans in four previously abandoned structures: a former bakery and three 1800s houses. The properties sit in a one block area with each structure housing a site-specific installation for a three month exhibition period.

Randi Nygård will participate in European Exhibition of Young Artists at La Centrale Electrique en Brussels, European Center of Contemporary Art, Brussels, Belgium, 22 February–18 May 2008. The exhibition is organized by the International Association of Art Critics and it will feature newly educated young artist from all of Europe. Simon Harvey, First Amanuensis in Critical Theory at the Art Academy in Trondheim, Norway, Ph.D. from and former teacher at Goldsmith, London, UK, will write the catalogue text.

An exhibition of work by the artists Fred Ivar Utsi and Kristin Tårnesvik will be shown within a project at the independent artist collective Galleria Huuto. The project opens on 4 February in Helsinki.

Bergen based curator Mona Bentzen has been invited by the Elizabeth Foundation, NYC, to curate a complication of video works by Norwegian artists at the EFA Gallery in NYC in the last week of March 2008.

Gardar Eide Einarsson participates in the exhibition Come, come, come into my world curated by Andrew Renton that runs from November 16, 2007 through 31 August, 2008 at the Ellipse Foundation Contemporary Art Collection in Cascais in Portugal. Other participating artists are: Aleksandra Mir, Anri Sala, Dash Snow, Douglas Gordon, Erwin Wurm, Francis Alÿs, Franz West, Gabriel Orozco, Glenn Ligon, Haim Steinbach, Hamish Fulton, Jack Pierson, João Onofre, João Pedro Vale, John Bock, John Stezaker, Joseph Kosuth, Jimmie Durham, Mike Kelley, Miroslaw Balka, Muntean & Rosenblum, Olafur Eliasson, Raymond Pettibon, Rodney Graham, and Thomas Schütte.

Adriana Alves at Fuzuê Arte e Cultura in Rio de Janeiro: José Loyola has invited Adriana Alves to exhibit in the new art center Fuzuê in Rio de Janeiro. In addition to Alves' two floor-exhibition there will be a Norwegian contemporary video art programme and a seminar. The exhibiton run from January 2008. Adriana Alves will exhibit two installations and three sculptures. Her project is entitled Tragedy of the Common Man. The exhibition is supported by 03–Funding*.

Sissel Tolaas and Verdensteatret have been invited to exhibit within "Synthetic Times — Media Art China 2008, a Cultural Olympics Project" at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing. The exhibition curated by the NY based media curator, Zhang Ga, is organized around 4 distinctive yet interrelated themes that testify to the incessant and obsessive pursuit of an ideal world through artistic intervention into media and communications technologies as well as bio-cultural spheres. The four themes are: "Beyond Body", "Emotive Digital", "Blur: The Recombinant Reality", and "Here, There and Everywhere". The exhibition will include approximately fifty media works and is scheduled from 9 June through 3 July, as one of the more important cultural events leading up to the Olympic Games in Beijing. The project is supported by 03–Funding*.

Karolin Tampere and Stefan Mitterer together with Camila Marambio, Head of the Residency Programme at La Peluqueria, curate Life is All About Taking Things In and Putting Things Out at Tudor Salon in Santiago de Chile from 10 through 26 January. The exhibition take form as presentations, discussions, live sound performances, and installations. Continuing and expanding its ideas by changing the format of the event from date to date, the aim of the project is to enter into dialogue and collaboration with local artists, musicians, and cultural producers. Participants include Daniel Pflumm, Johannes Høie, Simen Dyrhaug, Peter Mitterer, Kim Hiortøy, Mikko Viljakainen, Crist´bal Carvajal, Bernardo Oyarzún, Juan Pablo Langlois Vicuña, Jonas Ohlsson, Juan Guillermo Dumay, Ian Szydlowski, Valentina Serrati, Luis Guerra, Vera Dvale, Juan Subercaseaux, gfilms, Impresión Klara, Sex Tags, Francisca Benítez, Selma Ledder, Leopoldo Infante and Chinoy.

Norwegian curator Hans Askheim together with Claire Davies, Tom Keogh and Miranda Pope, graduates of the 2007 MA Creative Curating from Goldsmiths University of London, are developing a curatorial research project entitled Overland: London to Beijing. The curators will travel for six weeks in 2008, by train from London to Beijing, transporting a commissioned artwork. Along the route, the work of art will be exhibited at local venues. Through the physical transportation of the artwork Overland: London to Beijing, the curators strives to challenge the practical, geographic, historical and political connotations and value of the artwork. The project is supported by 03–Funding*.

Marius Notvik participates in the programme One Year Project #2 of The Land in Chiang Mai in Thailand in Winter 2008. Notvik's participation evolves around cultural codes and taboos concerning the meal, specifically focusing in on the Judean Kosher cuisine and the codes against hybridization. The Land Foundation is a platform of and for social engagement and alternative education founded in 2001 by Kamim Lerchaiprasert and Rirkrit Tiravanija. One year Project #2 is conceived to support a "new generation of cultural activists interested in its principles by providing an alternative education, within a creative working atmosphere with the task of learning more about natural farming and self-sustainable living."

Other News

Annie Anawana Haloba Hobøl was accepted for a second term for her residency at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam. Hobøl was selected by an independent international selection committee together with 26 fellow artists out of approximately 1100 applications submitted internationally. Hobø begins her second work period in January 2008 further in her video and theoretical studies. Advisors to the Rijksakademie include Charles Esche, Hou Hanru, Joan Jonas, Aernout Mik, Gerardo Mosquera, Matt Mullican, Philippe Pirotte, Marijke van Warmerdam among others.

23 January, 2008

*03-funding is a programme of grants supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for enhancing collaboration in the contemporary art field with professional artists in countries designated under the 03 — Cultural Exchange with Countries in the South.