Klara Lidén
01 May - 06 Jun 2015
KLARA LIDÉN
1 May – 6 June 2015
Galerie Neu is pleased to announce its second solo exhibition by Klara Lidén. Materials from an urban surrounding are installed throughout the gallery and transform the exhibition site into a space encompassing installation.
When Arto Lindsay and I performed something called THE RANT at the New Theatre here in Berlin this winter, the decor by Klara Lidén was a number of brown cardboard boxes graffitoed with pink spraypaint N:s and O:s. They sat suspended from the ceiling with disco-ball motors causing them to slowly spin and alternatively spell out NO or ON while Arto and I went on with our performance. This type of ambiguity has been part of Klara Lidén's work ever since she first started exhibiting almost ten years ago, she will perform often quite minimal actions in front of both video and still cameras that often seem to express a desire to hide away and not be seen. Her installations will contain obstacles of different kinds simultaneously inviting an audience in all while telling them to keep out or at least stay at a distance.
With the new body of works presented in the exhibition at Galerie Neu is involved a different concern namely that of the difference between art works and so-called functional objects. If a sculpture, say, can somehow disguise itself, and hide behind an impression of being functional, of being useful in a sense that's normally not expected of it. Or from a reversed perspective if a piece of furniture or lighting fixture hand-made by an artist can somehow be recontextualized as works of art. Whatever these new works are, they are performing a kind of drag performance of shifting meaning and presence. A double meaning and absence presence. They're heavy and 'there', yet somehow quite invisible, in your face and looking tough but still somehow avoiding your gaze even in the ultra lit-up and stage-like interior of a contemporary art gallery. They look plain yet offer one plenty of things to think about.
–Karl Holmqvist
1 May – 6 June 2015
Galerie Neu is pleased to announce its second solo exhibition by Klara Lidén. Materials from an urban surrounding are installed throughout the gallery and transform the exhibition site into a space encompassing installation.
When Arto Lindsay and I performed something called THE RANT at the New Theatre here in Berlin this winter, the decor by Klara Lidén was a number of brown cardboard boxes graffitoed with pink spraypaint N:s and O:s. They sat suspended from the ceiling with disco-ball motors causing them to slowly spin and alternatively spell out NO or ON while Arto and I went on with our performance. This type of ambiguity has been part of Klara Lidén's work ever since she first started exhibiting almost ten years ago, she will perform often quite minimal actions in front of both video and still cameras that often seem to express a desire to hide away and not be seen. Her installations will contain obstacles of different kinds simultaneously inviting an audience in all while telling them to keep out or at least stay at a distance.
With the new body of works presented in the exhibition at Galerie Neu is involved a different concern namely that of the difference between art works and so-called functional objects. If a sculpture, say, can somehow disguise itself, and hide behind an impression of being functional, of being useful in a sense that's normally not expected of it. Or from a reversed perspective if a piece of furniture or lighting fixture hand-made by an artist can somehow be recontextualized as works of art. Whatever these new works are, they are performing a kind of drag performance of shifting meaning and presence. A double meaning and absence presence. They're heavy and 'there', yet somehow quite invisible, in your face and looking tough but still somehow avoiding your gaze even in the ultra lit-up and stage-like interior of a contemporary art gallery. They look plain yet offer one plenty of things to think about.
–Karl Holmqvist