Maria Friberg
12 May - 06 Jun 2009
MARIA FRIBERG
12.05 – 06.06.2009
Opening: 12th May 2009, at 19:30
Visiting hours: Tuesday - Friday 11:00 – 20:00, Saturday 12:00 – 16:00
Swedish artist Maria Friberg’s solo exhibition is scheduled to open on Tuesday, 12th May 2009, at 19:30, at the ground floor of the Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center. The exhibition will run until 6th June 2009.
Maria Friberg was born in Malmö, Sweden. She currently lives and works in Stockholm. She graduated Stockholm’s Royal Swedish Academy of Arts and has been presenting her work internationally since the late 90s. Works by Friberg have been included in exhibitions at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA, and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum, New York, while she is scheduled to participate in a forthcoming group show at the Fortuny Museum, Venice, curated by Francesco Poli and Axel Vervoord.
The artist’s solo exhibition at the Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center will feature a video work, titled Commoncause. The work is a comment on contemporary social reality. 300 deflated basketballs that Friberg has wrapped in black velvet – in keeping with the aesthetics of black-clad performers that her work often references –forcefully pour down the stairs of the Nationalmuseum, Sweden’s Stockholm-based National Gallery. This uniform mass of black lumps racing down the stairs is a direct allusion to the swarms of people hurriedly getting off en masse at subway stations, or the crowds of contemporary art followers. The impression evoked by this image of a massive outpour and the sense of confusion it creates is further enhanced by the actual thud of the tumbling balls Friberg adds to it. It is a sound reminiscent of the myriads of hustled, stray steps echoing daily through the contemporary metropolis. The use of slow motion produces a dizzying effect, a feeling not unlike that experienced when in the midst of a clamouring crowd. The image’s imposing quality, as well as the use of a single, fixed frame forbids viewers from partaking in the action, at the same time as it renders them helpless before the menace of cascading balls. The effect of the balls’ landslide-like motion is counteracted by the camera’s bottom-to-top angle, granting the work a necessary sense of compositional and emotional balance. The slight-of-hand manner by which the balls disappear once they reach the foot of the stairs leaves the question of their fate open, and viewers filled with relief.
Friberg states her concern though she refrains from clearly illustrating her point; instead, she allows it to come forth as a subtle hint over the three minutes of the work’s duration, all the while managing to keep the viewer mesmerized.
12.05 – 06.06.2009
Opening: 12th May 2009, at 19:30
Visiting hours: Tuesday - Friday 11:00 – 20:00, Saturday 12:00 – 16:00
Swedish artist Maria Friberg’s solo exhibition is scheduled to open on Tuesday, 12th May 2009, at 19:30, at the ground floor of the Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center. The exhibition will run until 6th June 2009.
Maria Friberg was born in Malmö, Sweden. She currently lives and works in Stockholm. She graduated Stockholm’s Royal Swedish Academy of Arts and has been presenting her work internationally since the late 90s. Works by Friberg have been included in exhibitions at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA, and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum, New York, while she is scheduled to participate in a forthcoming group show at the Fortuny Museum, Venice, curated by Francesco Poli and Axel Vervoord.
The artist’s solo exhibition at the Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center will feature a video work, titled Commoncause. The work is a comment on contemporary social reality. 300 deflated basketballs that Friberg has wrapped in black velvet – in keeping with the aesthetics of black-clad performers that her work often references –forcefully pour down the stairs of the Nationalmuseum, Sweden’s Stockholm-based National Gallery. This uniform mass of black lumps racing down the stairs is a direct allusion to the swarms of people hurriedly getting off en masse at subway stations, or the crowds of contemporary art followers. The impression evoked by this image of a massive outpour and the sense of confusion it creates is further enhanced by the actual thud of the tumbling balls Friberg adds to it. It is a sound reminiscent of the myriads of hustled, stray steps echoing daily through the contemporary metropolis. The use of slow motion produces a dizzying effect, a feeling not unlike that experienced when in the midst of a clamouring crowd. The image’s imposing quality, as well as the use of a single, fixed frame forbids viewers from partaking in the action, at the same time as it renders them helpless before the menace of cascading balls. The effect of the balls’ landslide-like motion is counteracted by the camera’s bottom-to-top angle, granting the work a necessary sense of compositional and emotional balance. The slight-of-hand manner by which the balls disappear once they reach the foot of the stairs leaves the question of their fate open, and viewers filled with relief.
Friberg states her concern though she refrains from clearly illustrating her point; instead, she allows it to come forth as a subtle hint over the three minutes of the work’s duration, all the while managing to keep the viewer mesmerized.