KNUT ÅSDAM
Dronningensgt. 4 pb 1158 Sentrum
May 06–September 03
In the most famous video by Norwegian artist Knut Åsdam, Untitled: Pissing, 1995, one is confronted with the close-up of a man's crotch as he urinates while wearing dress pants. This work was presented in the Nordic Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1999, and is now one of the anchors of this small "midcareer" survey (Åsdam was born only in 1968). The relationship between urban structures and states of mind is a recurrent theme in Åsdam's more recent work, which mostly consists of photography, film, and video. In the series of photographs the artist calls "scenes," actors appear in urban public spaces as banal as that title suggests. The installation Psychasthenia 10 series 2, 2001, a slide show inside a dark, private room bordered by curtains, proves to be a hypnotic experience. Image after image shows "portraits" of large, modern buildings taken in different cities. The work compares these buildings' uniformity (and, by extension, the single-minded nature of modernism's utopian ideals) with the breakdown of the distinction between the personality and space. Like the show as a whole, it invites the spectator to indulge in the journey that is collective critical engagement with one's environment.