Matias Faldbakken
26 Sep - 14 Nov 2010
MATIAS FALDBAKKEN
"War After Peace (After War)"
September 26 – November 14, 2010
Opening September 25, 2010, 8 pm
Norwegian artist Matias Faldbakken presents the exhibition WAR AFTER PEACE (AFTER WAR) at the Neuer Aachener Kunstverein. Faldbakken’s provocative art breaks with societal conventions and formulates a radical anti-stance toward dominant popular culture. The title of the exhibition points to the aggressive and confrontational potential of the works on display. Faldbakken’s conceptual strategies employ pop-cultural media such as magazines and films as means for rebellion, negation, and nihilism. With the exhibition title WAR AFTER PEACE (AFTER WAR) Faldbakken translates into a cyclical short-circuit the paradox of wars that are only started in order to foster peace. After every peace comes war, after every war peace. This seemingly concise statement reveals a permanently smoldering, latent potential for aggression.
Matias Faldbakken’s works expose this potential for aggression with confrontational gestures, unsettling means, and dead ends. Faldbakken employs a strategy of exploiting potential as a destructive method. The same word is repeatedly sprayed on the wall until it is no longer legible, newspapers are scanned over and over until their contents are no longer recognizable, films are projected on top of one another until what is shown cannot be deciphered. The repetition of the image and the superimposition of image layers produce a form of seriality that disintegrates from within. Faldbakken searches for absolute freedom in total negation: “Both my art practice and my writing have been about negation and negativistic strategies: hate, misanthropy, and so on. [...] I guess my use of the word negation is partly an expressive formulation of a worldview based on disappointment, and partly a way of believing in maintaining potentiality through a negativistic approach,” states Faldbakken in a 2009 edition of Mousse Magazine. He doesn’t escape into (aesthetic) alternative worlds, but exploits the potential of what’s at hand by pushing it beyond the point of recognition. This excessive forcing of limits is a strategy of negation that bears nihilistic tendencies. Hence the fourth edition of the newspaper See You On The Frontpage Of The Last Newspaper Those Mothersfuckers Ever Print, produced for the NAK, consists only of the gridded lines of empty text columns.
Matias Faldbakken (born 1973) lives and works in Oslo, Norway. Recent exhibitions include You think you go but you gon’t at Objectif (Antwerp) 2010, in 2009, Shocked Into Abstraction, Ikon Gallery (Birmingham), The National Museum of Art, Design and Architecture (Oslo), Reena Spaulings Fine Art (New York), and Extreme Siesta, Kunst Halle St. Gallen (St. Gallen). In 2005 Falbakken represented Norway at the 51st Venice Biennale. As an author he has also achieved international recognition for his trilogy The Cocka Hola Company (in German 2005, Blumenbar-Verlag), Macht und Rebel (in German 2005), and Unfun (in German 2009).
We would like to thank the Königlich Norwegische Botschaft (Royal Norwegian Embassy) in Berlin and the Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA) for their generous support. Furthermore we would like to thank the Aachener Stadtbetriebe.
"War After Peace (After War)"
September 26 – November 14, 2010
Opening September 25, 2010, 8 pm
Norwegian artist Matias Faldbakken presents the exhibition WAR AFTER PEACE (AFTER WAR) at the Neuer Aachener Kunstverein. Faldbakken’s provocative art breaks with societal conventions and formulates a radical anti-stance toward dominant popular culture. The title of the exhibition points to the aggressive and confrontational potential of the works on display. Faldbakken’s conceptual strategies employ pop-cultural media such as magazines and films as means for rebellion, negation, and nihilism. With the exhibition title WAR AFTER PEACE (AFTER WAR) Faldbakken translates into a cyclical short-circuit the paradox of wars that are only started in order to foster peace. After every peace comes war, after every war peace. This seemingly concise statement reveals a permanently smoldering, latent potential for aggression.
Matias Faldbakken’s works expose this potential for aggression with confrontational gestures, unsettling means, and dead ends. Faldbakken employs a strategy of exploiting potential as a destructive method. The same word is repeatedly sprayed on the wall until it is no longer legible, newspapers are scanned over and over until their contents are no longer recognizable, films are projected on top of one another until what is shown cannot be deciphered. The repetition of the image and the superimposition of image layers produce a form of seriality that disintegrates from within. Faldbakken searches for absolute freedom in total negation: “Both my art practice and my writing have been about negation and negativistic strategies: hate, misanthropy, and so on. [...] I guess my use of the word negation is partly an expressive formulation of a worldview based on disappointment, and partly a way of believing in maintaining potentiality through a negativistic approach,” states Faldbakken in a 2009 edition of Mousse Magazine. He doesn’t escape into (aesthetic) alternative worlds, but exploits the potential of what’s at hand by pushing it beyond the point of recognition. This excessive forcing of limits is a strategy of negation that bears nihilistic tendencies. Hence the fourth edition of the newspaper See You On The Frontpage Of The Last Newspaper Those Mothersfuckers Ever Print, produced for the NAK, consists only of the gridded lines of empty text columns.
Matias Faldbakken (born 1973) lives and works in Oslo, Norway. Recent exhibitions include You think you go but you gon’t at Objectif (Antwerp) 2010, in 2009, Shocked Into Abstraction, Ikon Gallery (Birmingham), The National Museum of Art, Design and Architecture (Oslo), Reena Spaulings Fine Art (New York), and Extreme Siesta, Kunst Halle St. Gallen (St. Gallen). In 2005 Falbakken represented Norway at the 51st Venice Biennale. As an author he has also achieved international recognition for his trilogy The Cocka Hola Company (in German 2005, Blumenbar-Verlag), Macht und Rebel (in German 2005), and Unfun (in German 2009).
We would like to thank the Königlich Norwegische Botschaft (Royal Norwegian Embassy) in Berlin and the Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA) for their generous support. Furthermore we would like to thank the Aachener Stadtbetriebe.