Month: February 2008

“I will never lie to my mother again”


“I will never lie to my mother again”

Group exhibition curated by ANDREW SENDOR

MOGADISHNI AAR is pleased to present “I will never lie to my mother again”, a group exhibition curated by New York based artist Andrew Sendor. An exciting exhibition for both MOGADISHNI and Denmark, as all but one of these artists work has yet to be seen in this country. Included in the exhibition are drawing, painting, photography and sculpture.

The participating artists are THORDIS ADALSTEINSDOTTIR, DANIEL DAVIDSON, JOHN KLECKNER, DIETRICH SCHIFELING, ANDREAS SCHULENBURG, PINAR YOLACAN. The show has been enabled by the collaboration of international galleries Rivington Arms (NY), Stux Gallery (NY), Peres Projects (Los Angeles/Berlin) and Galerie Schuster (Berlin/Frankfurt).

On view is a conglomerate of challenging, thought provoking artworks that share commonalities in content and large contrasts in the methodologies employed. Within the gaps of this vast range of mediums and styles lies meaning regarding how an artistic vision is born and realized. While there are moments of realism, the exhibition is predominantly seen through a ‘fictive lens’– often more accurate than that of a ‘scientific lens’. There is an inner turmoil and unrest that is present in the works, addressing some difficult truths inherent within present-day societal dynamics. Brought into light are ideas surrounding human mortality and the ways in which we go about avoiding or confronting this age old topic, censorship versus raw expression within the creative process and the exposure of a personal, deep-rooted, emotional and psychological discord.

In the paintings of Thordis Adalsteinsdottir (b. 1975, Iceland) there is an undeniable sensitivity for human emotions and the tension of human communication or lack thereof. Distorted figures inhabit an unknown space defined by the reductive monochrome shapes that characterize Adalsteinsdottir’s idiosyncratic world of painting. While the stories that fuel her process of generating imagery are often personal, the resulting painting will always transcend the personal—floating in a universal realm of graphic language.

Daniel Davidson’s (b. 1965, U.S.) figurative paintings reveal a highly subjective fusion of hybrid characters, spaces, and styles. The figures that people his works are often self-portrait caricatures of an infinite variety of possible selves. His goal “is the creation of a meaningful reflection of the emotional states inherent in everyday experience. Often employing the comic or the grotesque, these paintings are multiple and fractured personalities looking for a cobbled identity.”

John Kleckner (b. 1978, U.S.) creates proto-emotional pictorial phenomena that employ metaphors of biology and evolutionary ecology. His works depict human beings in stages of transformation-to occupants of lush natural realms, to unexplained physical states, and to obscure crevices of metaphysics. They evoke a revelatory exposure of the artist and the inner self at large.

Small-scale, expressionistic paintings by Dietrich Schifeling (b.1977, U.S.) portray uncomfortably intimate interiors replete with non-linear narrative content. At once fantastical and commonplace, depicted are highly sexually charged scenes from the ‘everyday’ populated with both humans and animals. More often than not, it is the bedroom where the activity takes place in Schifeling’s paintings, which raises questions about our approval or repression of sexual motives and desires in general.

Born in Germany but educated and living in Denmark, Andreas Schulenburg (B. 1975, Germany) has a sharp eye for the naturalized Danish national feeling and the clichés not always visible to the Danes’ own eyes. Schulenburg’s usual humorous and society critical angle is expressed in his felt piece “Harmonie”, a reflection on ‘danishness’ as expressed by the milk carton. The brand usually shows a cow in a sunny Danish landscape. In Schulenburg’s version, however, a sort of Danish nearsightedness is indicated through a “Siamese twin cow” joined by the necks, leaving a mutated double cow with no heads, only bodies. The cow is flanked by a polar bear and a pyramid, leaving the viewer thinking about Denmark in relation to the stereotype images of other parts of the world.

Pinar Yolacan’s (b. 1981, Turkey) photographs are from her ‘Perishables’ series executed from 2001-2004. This particular series of photographs depicts ageing Upper East Side WASP-style women, which seduces and disgusts in equal measure. The posed figures are draped in clothing that was created by the artist from materials as unpredictable as: cow stomach, chicken skin, tripe and lamb testicles. Any semblance of appeal dissolves when, on closer inspection, the subtly sophisticated cream and tan garments reveal their deeply repellent origins. These amorphous offerings hang lifeless, indistinguishable from the flesh they shroud: Yolacan hints at the fast-encroaching mortality of her subjects by reincarnating the already demised.

MOGADISHNI

MAGNUS THIERFELDER


MAGNUS THIERFELDER

The work of Magnus Thierfelder is an exercise in visual synthesis, where the recognizable aspect and familiarity of the objects presented tends to degrade into a realm of mystery, and it dawns on you that you are losing your sense of orientation. In common with lots of artists of his generation, the starting point for the work of Magnus Thierfelder is the everyday object, whose ambiguous semantic value he spotlights by morphologically manipulating details and proportions until a new, paradoxically effective quality is returned to them. Untitled (pause) (2005) is an emblematic piece in which lamps stand around abandoned on the floor and, despite being plugged in, give off no light. Here, the critical will of the artist focuses our attention on the mute presence of these lamps which, different from each other and deprived of their normal function, now clearly appear to us in an anthropomorphic guise, almost silent – figures listening quietly or in a state of mute protest. The relationship between the subject, who knows the object, and the object of knowledge is no longer linear; the scene with the lamps challenges our perception and instils doubt in our mind’s certainty. This act by Thierfelder has a philosophical twist, reaching into the sphere of contemporary phenomenological research into perception and knowledge.
Magnificent Desolation (2002-2006) continues in this direction of surprise and mystery. Here, a black carpet containing two steps invites us to enter or leave it secretively. This is an impossible materialisation, an uncanny scene worthy of a ghost story or cartoon. The
carpet appears to have become a large black hole, destined to swallow up whoever ventures near it. This could be a metaphor for the risks inherent in seeking knowledge (the title comes from the words spoken by Buzz Aldrin, the second person to have walked on the moon). This piece further highlights the humanistic nature of Thierfelder’s work and his clear desire to bear witness to human experience and aspirations. The subtle irony that links noir and the eccentric, which runs through the work of this artist, clearly comes out in Visionary (2006) and in the drawings Time and time again (2006). These pieces plunge the viewer into an almost TV cartoon-like atmosphere. The artist’s set seems to be concentrated in an exhaustive synthesis, where a bizarre escape-from-the-city scene through the inside of a drainpipe, somewhere between the streets and the rooftops, leaves us struggling to fathom out the real nature of the fugitive. What really happens? And what doesn’t? I’m not sure any more (2006) is the only possible answer and an enigmatic summary of the exhibition and its broken dialectic as it hovers somewhere between presence and absence, real and unreal. The drawing represents a broken surface, a glass or mirror, that reveals through its ambiguous identity the drifting and interrogative nature of the whole project. Perception can provide only vague and incomplete information; it is up to us to recompose the data and experiences into a new and complete meaning.

Christina Wilson

Shirin Neshat


SHIRIN NESHAT – Women without Men

The international video artist Shirin Neshat’s latest work, Women without Men, will be exhibited at ARoS.
It is the world premiere of this major video cycle consisting of five video works.
Since her breakthrough in the 1990s with the photographic series Women of Allah, Neshat has focused on themes like genders, oppression of women, life in exile, and East versus West on the background of a Middle Eastern context.
The new works based on a novel by the Iranian writer Shahrnush Parsipur narrate the ‘close-knit’ life stories of five women finding refuge in a garden, which becomes a kind of utopic space.
The narrative style of Women without Men connects to the magical-realist tradition. The visuals are incredible beautiful and the narratives saturated with despair and anxiety. As in previous works – for Shirin Neshat art will always be a balancing act of the universal and the culturally specific.

Aros