Simon Dybbroe Møller
28 Apr - 23 Jun 2007
Simon Dybbroe Møller
On Ill Winds and Loss of Sanity, Part II
Opening Friday, April 27, 2007, 6pm - 10pm
Exhibition April 28 - June 23, 2007
Opening hours Tue - Sat 11am - 6pm
Reflection and sound, wind and light, time and movement are the immaterial elements pervading Simon Dybbroe Møller's exhibition. With accidental and playful means, he creates a nostalgic atmosphere based upon a conceptual approach. With small dislocations, embedded within a multitude of narrative elements, Simon Dybbroe Møller reproduces and refers to what is past.
Wind blows through the gallery, the door and a window are ajar, held open by the model of an outdoor sculpture from a region in California and by a silver spoon from Venice: two places that are known for their ill winds, Santa Ana and Scirocco. However, in the exhibition the wind revives the work DEAD BbAGGAGE, a wind chime made of broken off glass tubes, the tones of which correspond with the letters in the work's title. Starting point for this collaborative work with Jacob Dahl Jürgensen, is the video Violin tuned D.E.A.D. by Bruce Nauman, in which the latter plays the four notes on his violin according to the same principle. Whereas Bruce Nauman engages with bodily experience, the experience of space and human identity, the wind chime raises quite literally the question for the baggage of the past and its significance for the presence.
The video Pantomima della Stella Gigante pursues a similar interrogation. Four mimes reenact the famous photograph of four technicians holding a large-size painting by Frank Stella. However, in Simon Dybbroe Møller's version, the artwork has vanished and an imaginary picture is carried. Consequently, it is not its weight but the temporal duration that eventually forces the actors to 'set down' the work and to leave the picture frame. Only in the brief moment when first touching the floor, the painting appears to reemerge, producing the only sound audible throughout the video.
Music is likely to be the most immediate medium to repeat a sentiment of the past over and over again. In another video, Simon Dybbroe Møller uses it in juxtaposition with footage of a ruin of modernity, the 'Szkieletor' in Krakow.
91 meters in height, it was planned as a modern high rise but was never finished and thus only ever existed as a ruin. The projection of the filmed ruin is filmed in turn, while Simon Dybbroe Møller pursues the paradoxical task to respond to this non-narrative footage with musical improvisation. “We arrive too late, the event has already happened, we only inhabit the ruins, which it left behind. However, it is within this fractioned relationship that we recognise ourselves. The ruins, which we inhabit, are the place where we live and thus some kind of home, after all.”*
To see the presence through the mirror of the past is the guideline of the entire exhibition. It is the most explicit in a series of portraits of abstract painters. Their faces are reflected in geometric mirrors, which contain in themselves the structures dominating the painter's compositions. These mirror images are in turn preserved with the means of photography. The reproduction of a fragmented past as our presence is the nostalgia to which Simon Dybbroe Møller wants to lead us.
*Jan Verwoert “It's the same old song but with a different meaning since you've been gone“, will be published in the catalogue: Simon Dybbroe Møller „Like origami gone wrong“, eds Aarhus Kunstbygning and Kunstmuseum Thun, jrp | ringier
"On ill winds and loss of sanity, part II“ is the continuation of an exhibition at westlondonprojects in London in March 2007. Simultaneous to his current show at the gallery, Simon Dybbroe Møller will realise a project in the public space on invitation of the 'Verein zur Förderung von Kunst und Kultur am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz'. The work will be displayed on location between April and September 2007.
On Ill Winds and Loss of Sanity, Part II
Opening Friday, April 27, 2007, 6pm - 10pm
Exhibition April 28 - June 23, 2007
Opening hours Tue - Sat 11am - 6pm
Reflection and sound, wind and light, time and movement are the immaterial elements pervading Simon Dybbroe Møller's exhibition. With accidental and playful means, he creates a nostalgic atmosphere based upon a conceptual approach. With small dislocations, embedded within a multitude of narrative elements, Simon Dybbroe Møller reproduces and refers to what is past.
Wind blows through the gallery, the door and a window are ajar, held open by the model of an outdoor sculpture from a region in California and by a silver spoon from Venice: two places that are known for their ill winds, Santa Ana and Scirocco. However, in the exhibition the wind revives the work DEAD BbAGGAGE, a wind chime made of broken off glass tubes, the tones of which correspond with the letters in the work's title. Starting point for this collaborative work with Jacob Dahl Jürgensen, is the video Violin tuned D.E.A.D. by Bruce Nauman, in which the latter plays the four notes on his violin according to the same principle. Whereas Bruce Nauman engages with bodily experience, the experience of space and human identity, the wind chime raises quite literally the question for the baggage of the past and its significance for the presence.
The video Pantomima della Stella Gigante pursues a similar interrogation. Four mimes reenact the famous photograph of four technicians holding a large-size painting by Frank Stella. However, in Simon Dybbroe Møller's version, the artwork has vanished and an imaginary picture is carried. Consequently, it is not its weight but the temporal duration that eventually forces the actors to 'set down' the work and to leave the picture frame. Only in the brief moment when first touching the floor, the painting appears to reemerge, producing the only sound audible throughout the video.
Music is likely to be the most immediate medium to repeat a sentiment of the past over and over again. In another video, Simon Dybbroe Møller uses it in juxtaposition with footage of a ruin of modernity, the 'Szkieletor' in Krakow.
91 meters in height, it was planned as a modern high rise but was never finished and thus only ever existed as a ruin. The projection of the filmed ruin is filmed in turn, while Simon Dybbroe Møller pursues the paradoxical task to respond to this non-narrative footage with musical improvisation. “We arrive too late, the event has already happened, we only inhabit the ruins, which it left behind. However, it is within this fractioned relationship that we recognise ourselves. The ruins, which we inhabit, are the place where we live and thus some kind of home, after all.”*
To see the presence through the mirror of the past is the guideline of the entire exhibition. It is the most explicit in a series of portraits of abstract painters. Their faces are reflected in geometric mirrors, which contain in themselves the structures dominating the painter's compositions. These mirror images are in turn preserved with the means of photography. The reproduction of a fragmented past as our presence is the nostalgia to which Simon Dybbroe Møller wants to lead us.
*Jan Verwoert “It's the same old song but with a different meaning since you've been gone“, will be published in the catalogue: Simon Dybbroe Møller „Like origami gone wrong“, eds Aarhus Kunstbygning and Kunstmuseum Thun, jrp | ringier
"On ill winds and loss of sanity, part II“ is the continuation of an exhibition at westlondonprojects in London in March 2007. Simultaneous to his current show at the gallery, Simon Dybbroe Møller will realise a project in the public space on invitation of the 'Verein zur Förderung von Kunst und Kultur am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz'. The work will be displayed on location between April and September 2007.