Nina Beier
09 Feb - 04 May 2014
NINA BEIER
Rocky
9 February – 4 May 2014
The artistic practice of Nina Beier (born 1975 in Denmark, lives in Berlin) deals with surprising constellations and oppositions. These often appear coincidental, instable, and ambiguous. Nina Beier combines objects, materials, and motifs from heterogeneous contexts, presenting them in a new, extraordinary, even paradoxical light. Her compositions trace how shifts in time, context and presentation, affect the inherent intention in things, uncovering the various ways mediation mutates information from things to representations and back again. As with classical still lifes, the focus here is on ideas of time and value presenting the illusory and transitory nature of things.
In her first solo exhibition in Switzerland at Kunsthaus Glarus, the artist presents a combination of new and existing works. Two floor works hint at the contested realms of global currency exchange, renegotiating time and labour’s relationship to value systems. With Minutes (2013), genuine hair wigs from India or China collide with handmade, oriental rug samples (wagirehs) pressed under glass. Traditional handcraft meets degrading trade, where the body itself becomes a commodity. With Greens (2013), indoor plants are dried and pressed under glass on beach towels featuring various currency designs. Here symbols of economic and ecological growth are superimposed. Animal shells frame a new work, titled Wallets (2014), in which the enduring body armours and dwellings of different species are stuffed with a variety of soft, industrial materials. The subject of permanence appears again in ceramic tiles, titled Tileables (2014) which, upon closer inspection, reveal themselves to carry prints of digital renderings of stone textures. These are borrowed from 3D programs to build temporary visions of architectural constructions. Imitations of mass-produced marble, shale stone and plasterwork, play on realitiy and fiction and the obvious representation that is taking place. A framed series with the title Sweat no Sweat no Sweat no Sweat no Sweat (2013) presents various zoomed in details of the film character Rocky Balboa’s torso with a sweatshirt featuring an artificial patch of sweat. Here, in turn, the human body and its otherwise fleeting secretions are created as image, questioning the very achievability of capturing the human condition. In the exhibition, a wide range of materials, representational and temporal concepts are situated in relationship to one another. Hard and soft, living and dead material, authentic object and image, but also constancy and impermanence, art history and the digital age encounter one another in various constellations.
After graduating from the Royal College of Art in London (2004) Nina Beier has shown her work in numerous solo exhibitions, including the David Roberts Art Foundation, London (2014, upcoming), Glasgow Sculpture Studios, Glasgow (2013), Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerpen (2012-16), Standard (Oslo), Oslo (2013), Proyectos Monclova, Mexico City (2013), Laura Bartlett Gallery, London (2012), Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2011-12), Croy Nielsen, Berlin (2011 & 2014), and group exhibitions at Centre Pompidou, Paris (2013), Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (2013), Museion Bozen, Bolzano (2012), The Artist’s Institute, New York (2012), KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2012), Index, Stockholm (2012), Tate Modern, London (2012), Moca, Miami (2011), Extra City, Antwerp (2011), The Swiss Institute, New York (2011). Her works have also been presented at biennales including Le Mouvement – Performing the City, Biel (2014, upcoming), 5 Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2013, with Simon Dybbroe Moller).
Rocky
9 February – 4 May 2014
The artistic practice of Nina Beier (born 1975 in Denmark, lives in Berlin) deals with surprising constellations and oppositions. These often appear coincidental, instable, and ambiguous. Nina Beier combines objects, materials, and motifs from heterogeneous contexts, presenting them in a new, extraordinary, even paradoxical light. Her compositions trace how shifts in time, context and presentation, affect the inherent intention in things, uncovering the various ways mediation mutates information from things to representations and back again. As with classical still lifes, the focus here is on ideas of time and value presenting the illusory and transitory nature of things.
In her first solo exhibition in Switzerland at Kunsthaus Glarus, the artist presents a combination of new and existing works. Two floor works hint at the contested realms of global currency exchange, renegotiating time and labour’s relationship to value systems. With Minutes (2013), genuine hair wigs from India or China collide with handmade, oriental rug samples (wagirehs) pressed under glass. Traditional handcraft meets degrading trade, where the body itself becomes a commodity. With Greens (2013), indoor plants are dried and pressed under glass on beach towels featuring various currency designs. Here symbols of economic and ecological growth are superimposed. Animal shells frame a new work, titled Wallets (2014), in which the enduring body armours and dwellings of different species are stuffed with a variety of soft, industrial materials. The subject of permanence appears again in ceramic tiles, titled Tileables (2014) which, upon closer inspection, reveal themselves to carry prints of digital renderings of stone textures. These are borrowed from 3D programs to build temporary visions of architectural constructions. Imitations of mass-produced marble, shale stone and plasterwork, play on realitiy and fiction and the obvious representation that is taking place. A framed series with the title Sweat no Sweat no Sweat no Sweat no Sweat (2013) presents various zoomed in details of the film character Rocky Balboa’s torso with a sweatshirt featuring an artificial patch of sweat. Here, in turn, the human body and its otherwise fleeting secretions are created as image, questioning the very achievability of capturing the human condition. In the exhibition, a wide range of materials, representational and temporal concepts are situated in relationship to one another. Hard and soft, living and dead material, authentic object and image, but also constancy and impermanence, art history and the digital age encounter one another in various constellations.
After graduating from the Royal College of Art in London (2004) Nina Beier has shown her work in numerous solo exhibitions, including the David Roberts Art Foundation, London (2014, upcoming), Glasgow Sculpture Studios, Glasgow (2013), Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerpen (2012-16), Standard (Oslo), Oslo (2013), Proyectos Monclova, Mexico City (2013), Laura Bartlett Gallery, London (2012), Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2011-12), Croy Nielsen, Berlin (2011 & 2014), and group exhibitions at Centre Pompidou, Paris (2013), Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (2013), Museion Bozen, Bolzano (2012), The Artist’s Institute, New York (2012), KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2012), Index, Stockholm (2012), Tate Modern, London (2012), Moca, Miami (2011), Extra City, Antwerp (2011), The Swiss Institute, New York (2011). Her works have also been presented at biennales including Le Mouvement – Performing the City, Biel (2014, upcoming), 5 Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2013, with Simon Dybbroe Moller).