PUSHWAGNER AND LARS LAUMANN 
TO PARTICIPATE 
IN THE 5^TH BERLIN BIENNALE

Press Preview: 3 April, 2008 
Professional preview: 4 April 
Public Opening: 5 April 
Open through: 15 June 
For more information visit 
www.berlinbiennale.info.

Norwegian artists Pushwagner and Lars Laumann have been selected to participate in this year's Berlin Biennale entitled When Things Cast No Shadowand curated by Adam Szymczyk, Director of Kunsthalle Basel, together with independent curator and writer Elena Flilipovic. The biennale in its entirety will be divided into two different parts — one that is realized in the day and the other, throughout the night, bringing together over 100 artists from different generations in an exhibition that aims to shine light on the diversity of art practices today, focusing predominantly on artists' processes rather than themes, forms or temporality. The biennale's "day" will include newly commissioned works that will be shown throughout different venues — at Kunstwerke Institute for Contemporary Art, Neue Nationalgalerie, Schinkel Pavillion and Skulpturenpark Berlin_Zentrum. The biennale's "night", entitled Mes nuits sont plus belles que vos jours, will present 63 projects by artists and thinkers and take place throughout the city and throughout the night. Among artists included – Manon de Boer, Cyprien Gaillard,Daniel Guzman, Susan Hiller, Gabriel Kuri, Goshka Macuga, Rosalind Nashashibi, Lucy Skaer, Paulina Olowska,Paola Pivi, Paul Sietsma, Piotr Uklanski.

The most recent film by Lars Laumann entitled Berlinmuren (2008) will be screened in the Skulpturenpark Berlin_Zentrum – a work that centres on a highly unusual relationship — the love affair between Eija-Riita Berliner-Mauer and the Berlin Wall. Laumann is guided by a respectful interest in the idiosyncracies of a marginalized social phonomena and in how society reacts to them. To house the screening of the film, Laumann will be designing a special structure that will be built on the wasteland area of Skulpturpark Berlin_Zentrum. The artist has also sub-curated an exhibition of works byPushwagner at the Schinkel Pavillion.

Located at the Kronprinzenpalais, the Schinkel Pavillion is the venue for the five alternating artist-curated solo exhibitions of artists, architects, and designers from a preceding generation. Taking place between 20 March and13 June, the artist-curated exhibitions will represent an opportunity for audiences to glimpse at ways in which younger artists engage with another generation.

At Kunstwerke, the work of Pushwagner will be exhibited as contextualized within the series Soft City – a pictorial novel drafted between 1969 and 1975 by the artist in the form of nearly 150 hand-drawn pages. The pictorial novel narrates a day in the live of a family living a mechanical life in a dehumanized city. Soft Cityis a key work, which serves as a rich source for Pushwagner's diverse later works as well as an important reference to dystopian science fiction literature and film that emerged in the 1960s and '70s. In showing the work, Szymczyk and Filipovic hope to "give access to a significant work of art still unknown to a larger public and thus paying tribute to an important work not yet having received proper recognition."

The participation of Pushwagner and Lars Laumann within the Berlin Biennale has been underwritten by a grant from OCA's International Support programme. The funding for International Support Programme is provided by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs