Vibeke Tandberg
31 Oct - 19 Dec 2008
Vibeke Tandberg
A piece of me
31 October – 19 December 2008
Klosterfelde Gallery and c/o – Atle Gerhardsen are extremely proud to announce their second tandem exhibition with the Norwegian artist Vibeke Tandberg.
The title of both shows is "A Piece of Me", a song title from Britney Spears' Album Blackout, which is about the media, and the pressure that the singer endures under the scrutiny of the public eye. The title is not only a reference to Britney Spears as a recurring motif, but also to the fact that, as is often the case, Vibeke Tandberg herself is portrayed in most of her works.
The central work at Klosterfelde is a floral wallpaper with a geometric pattern, which on closer examination turns out to be a repeating composition of a paparazzo picture of Britney Spears. It shows her sobbing as she leaves the courtroom after losing custody of her two children: the key themes are exposure and vulnerability – the singer is exposed to the media while mourning the loss of her children and her suffering is mercilessly revealed to the entire world.
The oversized collage works are selfportraits of Tandberg with a blond wig, bearing certain resemblances to earlier works such as Line or Beautiful, in which she investigated the issue of identity. In contrast to these digitally modified works, in her current pieces, the artist is much more intrusive in her images: she, for example, attaches the tormented face of a screaming baby with a blond wig to the body of a porn star, or replaces her own profile with that of an old lady or with the blood-smeared face of a young man. As in the Britney Spears wallpaper, all of the collages deal with the juxtaposition of exposing oneself and being exposed. It becomes clear that the vulnerability resulting from the exposure is a universal feeling - shared by everyone who is exposed. Interestingly enough, the old lady's profile or the blood-smeared face were all found on the internet – the 21st century medium of mass-exposure.
The focal point at c/o – Atle Gerhardsen is formed by the 16 mm film Script for a film (2008). This film was inspired by an unrealized sequence from Maya Deren's film At Land (1944).
Script for a film is rendered in the form of a manuscript, which simultaneously emerges -written with indecisive hand- as the spectator looks at the work. The script evokes mental images, and can be understood as visible, changeable prose. In Maya Deren's film a woman is washed up on a beach, and embarks on a remarkable journey during which she must struggle to preserve her own personality. The artist uses Deren's unused sequence, in which the main character is confronted with her mirror image in the bathroom, as a kind of trigger for her own work. From this point on in the movie, strange things start to happen. Tandberg expands on this latent paranoia in Deren's film, providing a theatre of paranoid mental images which are transmitted to the viewer in manuscript form, with a play on the medium of writing. Script for a film is accompanied by a row of photographs: small collage works were scanned in and enlarged with computer technology. They form a kind of loose-hand storyboard for the film.
Vibeke Tandberg became known for her digital photo collages in the nineties. The digital image processing opens up a simple way to question the possibility of a truth claim in photography. Doppelgänger and twins, these primal reproductions of the self, are included in a seemingly real world; masquerade and changing identity are fostered by computer manipulation.
In 2005, Vibeke Tandberg decided that the scissors should no longer be confined to a procedure on the computer; rather they have been included in the material artistic production - as a tool. The monumental work "IHT September 29, 2004" (2005) was made in this way, later to be shown in a joint exhibition with Klosterfelde and c/o – Atle Gerhardsen at Art Unlimited in Basel. Vibeke Tandberg's current work combines both techniques.
Vibeke Tandberg (born 1967) lives and works in Oslo and Berlin. Her works have been on display at numerous international exhibitions. Besides the parallel solo exhibition openings at c/o – Atle Gerhardsen and Klosterfelde in Berlin, the works of the artist are currently included in the group show "Ich kann mir nicht jeden Tag ein Ohr abschneiden – Dekonstruktionen des Künstlermythos” at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (3 October 2008 – 22 February 2009), in “Reality Check - Contemporary Art from the mid-90s to the Present” at the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen (6 September 2008 – 4 January 2009) and in the 28th Sao Paolo Biennial (26 October - 6 December 2008).
A piece of me
31 October – 19 December 2008
Klosterfelde Gallery and c/o – Atle Gerhardsen are extremely proud to announce their second tandem exhibition with the Norwegian artist Vibeke Tandberg.
The title of both shows is "A Piece of Me", a song title from Britney Spears' Album Blackout, which is about the media, and the pressure that the singer endures under the scrutiny of the public eye. The title is not only a reference to Britney Spears as a recurring motif, but also to the fact that, as is often the case, Vibeke Tandberg herself is portrayed in most of her works.
The central work at Klosterfelde is a floral wallpaper with a geometric pattern, which on closer examination turns out to be a repeating composition of a paparazzo picture of Britney Spears. It shows her sobbing as she leaves the courtroom after losing custody of her two children: the key themes are exposure and vulnerability – the singer is exposed to the media while mourning the loss of her children and her suffering is mercilessly revealed to the entire world.
The oversized collage works are selfportraits of Tandberg with a blond wig, bearing certain resemblances to earlier works such as Line or Beautiful, in which she investigated the issue of identity. In contrast to these digitally modified works, in her current pieces, the artist is much more intrusive in her images: she, for example, attaches the tormented face of a screaming baby with a blond wig to the body of a porn star, or replaces her own profile with that of an old lady or with the blood-smeared face of a young man. As in the Britney Spears wallpaper, all of the collages deal with the juxtaposition of exposing oneself and being exposed. It becomes clear that the vulnerability resulting from the exposure is a universal feeling - shared by everyone who is exposed. Interestingly enough, the old lady's profile or the blood-smeared face were all found on the internet – the 21st century medium of mass-exposure.
The focal point at c/o – Atle Gerhardsen is formed by the 16 mm film Script for a film (2008). This film was inspired by an unrealized sequence from Maya Deren's film At Land (1944).
Script for a film is rendered in the form of a manuscript, which simultaneously emerges -written with indecisive hand- as the spectator looks at the work. The script evokes mental images, and can be understood as visible, changeable prose. In Maya Deren's film a woman is washed up on a beach, and embarks on a remarkable journey during which she must struggle to preserve her own personality. The artist uses Deren's unused sequence, in which the main character is confronted with her mirror image in the bathroom, as a kind of trigger for her own work. From this point on in the movie, strange things start to happen. Tandberg expands on this latent paranoia in Deren's film, providing a theatre of paranoid mental images which are transmitted to the viewer in manuscript form, with a play on the medium of writing. Script for a film is accompanied by a row of photographs: small collage works were scanned in and enlarged with computer technology. They form a kind of loose-hand storyboard for the film.
Vibeke Tandberg became known for her digital photo collages in the nineties. The digital image processing opens up a simple way to question the possibility of a truth claim in photography. Doppelgänger and twins, these primal reproductions of the self, are included in a seemingly real world; masquerade and changing identity are fostered by computer manipulation.
In 2005, Vibeke Tandberg decided that the scissors should no longer be confined to a procedure on the computer; rather they have been included in the material artistic production - as a tool. The monumental work "IHT September 29, 2004" (2005) was made in this way, later to be shown in a joint exhibition with Klosterfelde and c/o – Atle Gerhardsen at Art Unlimited in Basel. Vibeke Tandberg's current work combines both techniques.
Vibeke Tandberg (born 1967) lives and works in Oslo and Berlin. Her works have been on display at numerous international exhibitions. Besides the parallel solo exhibition openings at c/o – Atle Gerhardsen and Klosterfelde in Berlin, the works of the artist are currently included in the group show "Ich kann mir nicht jeden Tag ein Ohr abschneiden – Dekonstruktionen des Künstlermythos” at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (3 October 2008 – 22 February 2009), in “Reality Check - Contemporary Art from the mid-90s to the Present” at the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen (6 September 2008 – 4 January 2009) and in the 28th Sao Paolo Biennial (26 October - 6 December 2008).