Month: February 2009

Niel Farber


MOGADISHNI proudly presents the third solo exhibition in MOGADISHNI by the Canadian artist Neil Farber (B.1975. Lives and works in Winnipeg, Canada). Neil Farber will be presenting his famous and intriguing works on paper as well as (for the first time ever) new works on canvas & board.

Illness and death are recurrent themes in Farber´s new works, in which his well-known, peculiar, round headed figures seem to multiply like harmful cells – or spread like an epidemic – across the picture surface. The unpretentiousness and innocence of the works are being infected by something dangerous, disturbing and absurd, and the simple, expressive line is added a notable weight. In the twinkling of an eye small transparent blots of running paint are transformed to swirling, absorbing water masses or to streams of blood from cut-off heads and the hair on the back of the viewer’s neck begin to bristle.

The main idea behind the show is the difference between the paintings and the drawings. “At this point I’m quite comfortable with the drawings and they seem to work out as I imagine them. The paintings are different as I have only been working on boards and canvases the last 8 months or so after not really painting much on my own for the last ten years. I’m still getting used to it, so there is more variety as I figure what I like or don’t like, what I can do and what I can’t. At one point I imagined a series of work related to cannibalism and I thought I would call the show “Canniballistics”, like ballistics from a police laboratory. The more I thought about the work related to cannibalism the less interested I was in making it, but I still wanted to use the title”. (Neil Farber January 2009).

The threats against the self or humanity are manifold, and Farber wrestles with both inner and outer demons and – with an equal amount of awe and mocking irony – faces our mutual feeling of anxiety. We are all in the firing line and the ideas for little, eeriness-causing narrative sequences, which thematize our vulnerability, seem to almost pile up inside the artist.

Farber´s surreal, obscure imagery with its varicoloured “overpopulation” of tiny people, frogs, rats, snakes, captured maidens, dragons, cats and ghosts belongs on the border line between childhood fear and grown-up fantasy and act as the basis for a dramatic description of the darker aspects of the human psyche. Aspects, which are disturbing and upsetting – perhaps even nightmarishly evil – but nonetheless serve as an integrated part of our identity. And on closer inspection may appear to contain certain redeeming qualities – like the vampire with the dejected look on its face, standing forth as a victim itself.

Farber enjoys great recognition and has shown internationally both as a solo artist and as part of the artist group “The Royal Art Lodge”, which was founded in 1996 and in addition to Farber also includes Michael Dumontier and Farber’s nephew Marcel Dzama. In the last years Farber has, among other places, exhibited at Clementine Gallery (N.Y.), Richard Heller Gallery (Santa Monica), Houldsworth (London) and Alice Day Gallery (Brussels). In 2008 Farber had solo shows at Sies + Höke Gallery, Düsseldorf and Richard Heller Gallery, Santa Monica, CA.

Mogadishni

Christian Vind


Christian Vind has run 225 sheets of white paper through a printing press along with a plate of cobber in order to obtain a simple depression in the paper caused by the pressure and the plate. The multiple sheets of paper are reworked to unique works of art, which are exhibited at Ekstrakt (Extract), Christian Vind’s solo exhibition at Galleri Tom Christoffersen.

The many works on paper are gathered into five frames: Ekstrakt 1-5. Collage, gouache, drawing, stamp, Letraset and reproductions such as photography is used. The 225 works has been given titles such as: Stroke, Kejtright, Voldby, Artist Talk, Ay Caramba!, Traces of Origin, Hvid Psykose, Last Call and Image dublicator.

This diversity in choice of materials and these multifaceted titles point at Ekstrakt as yet another labyrinthine exhibition by Christian Vind, which is elaborately thought through. A space where the artist – as in the previous artists’ books and comprehensive solo exhibitions – reorganises his ever accumulating archive of found objects, texts, works of arts, images, beach stones etc. Translated into new art works and a new structure of presentation the archive is brought to comment on both art history, history, a contemporary political situation and to Christian Vind and his artistic production in general. The presentation offers temporarily exchanges appearing between the works primarily by association, and new layers of meaning are continuously put into play.

Ekstrakt is the controlled juxtaposition of all and nothing, presented to all and for none – or to whom it may concern. The exhibition is simply a fantastic gesture.

*From Karen Friis Hansens catalogue text Tegn og Underlige Gerninger, published during Christian Vind’s solo exhibition at Silkeborg Kunstmuseum, 2008. Silkeborg Kunstmuseum purchased the artwork 117 Hvidpapirfeber boxsæt containing 117 reworked sheets of paper with depression.

Christian Vind (1969) graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 2003. Previous solo exhibitions are among others: Tegn og Underlige Gerninger – En Silkeborgfortolkning Silkeborg Kunstmuseum (awarded honorarium by the Danish Arts Foundation) and Gl. Holtegaard (2008). Tryktanken Galleri Tom Christoffersen (2006). Group exhibitions counts for example: The Map is Not the Territory Esbjerg Kunstmuseum (2008/09), Match Race – modernistic remixes between now and then Nordjyllands Kunstmuseum (2007), Exportable Goods A Krinzinger Projekte by Krinzinger Gallery Wien (2006). Of book projects especially vol. 1 and 2 in trilogy Hvidpapirfeber – Hvidpapirfeber (2004) og Bøf er Stegt (2005) – have gained attention. On February 20. 2009, the newest book project En rejse til Trieste will be released (a collaborative work with Claus Carstensen). Christian Vind is represented at Silkeborg K unstmuseum and has done engravings for Den Danske Radeerforening.

Tom Christoffersen

PETER BESTE: TRUE NORWEGIAN BLACK METAL JOHANNES ATLI HINRIKSSON: ST. CLAUDE



PETER BESTE: TRUE NORWEGIAN BLACK METAL
JOHANNES ATLI HINRIKSSON: ST. CLAUDE
Opening reception: February 13th 2009 from 5pm to 10 pm
Exhibition period: February 13th to March 7th 2009

In the name of Scandinavia and cult V1 Gallery opens two exhibitions Friday the 13th: the first exhibition, True Norwegian Black Metal, is the celebrated American photographer Peter Beste’s reflections of the darker side of Norway. The exhibition, St. Claude (whose title refers to the patron saint of sculpture), by the notorious Icelandic artist Johannes Atli Hinriksson’s is a ghost ride through the strange symbolic world of fantasy and reality.

PETER BESTE: TRUE NORWEGIAN BLACK METAL
Peter Beste is one of the most celebrated documentary photographers on the international contemporary art scene today. In particular Beste is famous for his precise and poetic portraits of subcultures. His seven year long portrayal of the gloomy worshippers of Norwegian black metal can be experienced from the mythical date Friday the 13th at V1 Gallery.

Beste’s documentary dives into the intense devotion of ’chaos and evil’. It depicts an existence, where darkness consumes light and where death is life. An obscure mix of Satanism, Nordic mythology, horror movies and extreme heavy metal forms the frame around this Norwegian subculture that aggressively forsakes Christianity and mainstream society in favour of Nordic heathen gods and self afflicted isolation. This violent subculture attracted international attention in the early 90s with a string of murders, suicides, church incinerations and grave desecrations, but in Beste’s pictures it is especially the bizarre and theatrical mannerism that fascinates. The men’s misanthropic scowl is complimented with a wardrobe rich in detail and a time consuming make-up that stands in stark contrast with Norway’s naked nature. In the spirit of Nietzsche the black metal culture fuses the Apollonian and Dionysian – an antagonistic harmony that beautifully enters the very silent monumental surroundings. Pentagrams, torture instruments, theatre blood, white face paint and black clothes are all essential elements in the almost teenage-like renunciation of normality. And even though it is difficult not to feel amused by the men’s vain postures the smile is wept of the face when met with their grim glare.

JOHANNES ATLI HINRIKSSON: ST.CLAUDE
The Norwegian self announced heathens are confronted with Johannes Atli Hinriksson’s occult obsessions. He traverses a universe consisting of symbols, totems, arch types, shamans and signs. Even though his art looks like a rejection of reality, Hinriksson’s works actually reflect and document contemporary Western life. Using mythology, religion, pirate fables, industry and tabloid media, he morbidly simulates the Western world where consumption is existence and flight from reality is habitual. The juvenile destruction contains – as in Beste’s photographs – a passage to a dark gravity where truths, lies, reality, fiction, destruction and creation are hurled together into one gritty human maelstrom. The furious sin flood – red like blood and black like death – covers his sculptures, collage, video and installation with grimy irony, white anger and a fluorescent societal critique much like Paul McCarthy’s mad and marvellous feverish mind trips.

THE BLACK THREAD
Like a stereoscopy the two exhibitions project a third dimension in the shape of question signs: where do you draw the line between firm conviction and blind superstition, morale and double standard, conception of reality and distortion of the truth? Beste’s and Hinriksson’s tales are by closer inspection not further from the stories we are told and tell ourselves. Their fables remind us to stay equally critical towards the adult truths and lies in the everyday as we are towards seemingly unknown universes.

V1