Come into the Open

Opening reception: Friday, 2 March 7 pm

Exhibition dates: 2 March – 11 April, 2007

Curated by: Elisabeth Byre

Artists: Erik Bünger (SE), Eve K. Tremblay (NO), Jan Freuchen (NO), Kine Lillestrøm (NO), Steven Claydon (UK), Marc Ganzglass (US), Jordan Wolfson (US) and Lars Morell (NO).

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Come Into the Open is the inaugural exhibition at 0047 OSLO, a continuation of the project space, PROJEKT 0047, in Berlin. The title is a double imperative: It is an invitation for the artists to reveal a secret or expose a working strategy. At the same time it is a statement from the exhibition space saying that we are continuing the inclusive profile that characterized PROJEKT 0047 in Berlin. The exhibition includes artists who through their works offer discrete revelations, whether by re-contextualization of found footage, new interpretations of their own or others’ work, or investigations of the architecture of the exhibition space.

Erik Bünger investigates the self-glorifying rhetoric of the film and music industry in the video “Gospels”. By juxtaposing footage from different rockumentary portraits and “making of”-movies, he creates an unbroken homage to an abstract figure, “Him”. Steven Claydon’s video ”Cluck Cluck” combines anthropomorphism, found footage, and The Golden Bough, John Frazer’s comparative anthropological work from 1922. The movie reflects critically, but humorously, the absurdness in cultural and historical bias. The autonomy and credibility of the artwork is investigated in Jan Freuchen’s installation ”(Works from) the Capgras Collection”. With the diagnosis Capgras Delusion as a starting point, a syndrome where the person believes that a close relative has been replaced by an identical impostor, Freuchen transfers the condition to the critical gaze of the art viewer.

We find another form of suspiciousness in Lars Morell’s two installations. ”Ghost Work” consists of texts and pictures of abductions and invisible art works, where the distinction between facts and fiction is blurred. The laser installation ”Blurry Diamonds” is based on Marcel Duchamp’s ”Sixteen Miles of String”, but the string is replaced by a laser beam to restrict the audience’s freedom of movement. In his video ”Neverland”, Jordan Wolfson shows the eyes of Michael Jackson from the Live from the Neverland Ranch broadcast. By erasing everything but the eyes, Wolfson emphasizes the only non-artificial part of Jackson’s body, and confronts the idea that the eyes are a window on the soul with the myths and scandals surrounding Jackson’s life. In her installation “re-flex,” Kine Lillestrøm investigates how displacements in perspective change our perception and comprehension of a spatial structure. Through subtle nuances, Lillestrøm uses the room as a photographic negative, emphasizing usually neglected elements in the architecture.

In his piece “Tricolor/Both Sides Now” Marc Ganzglass uses the dramatic story of the carrier Tricolor that went down with 3000 cars on board. Trying to mediate the grand tragedy of the story, Ganzglass first embarked on composing an opera together with a musician friend. After months of work, they ended up recording a version of Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now, which Ganzglass found more pertinent to the story than his own libretto. In “Unmanifested Still Films,” Eve K. Tremblay uses photos shot at various film sets while working as a still photographer. By regrouping these photos, Tremblay creates new stories unfolding in between fiction and documentary.

Artists:

Erik Bünger, born 1975 in Vaxjö, Sweden. Lives and works in Berlin.
Steven Claydon, born 1969 in London. Lives and works in London.
Jan Freuchen, born 1979 in Stavanger, Norway. Lives and works in Oslo.
Marc Ganzglass, born 1973 in Washington DC. Lives and works in New York.
Kine Lillestrøm, born 1977 in Tynset, Norway. Lives and works in Berlin and Oslo.
Lars Morell, born 1980 in Kristiansand, Norway. Lives and works in Berlin.
Eve K. Tremblay, born 1972 in Montreal, Canada. Lives and works in Berlin.
Jordan Wolfson, born 1980 in New York. Lives and works in New York and Berlin.