Statens Museum
for Kunst
Sølvgade 48-50
Copenhagen
T +45 3374 8494
Reality Check
September 6, 2008-
January 4, 2009
Reality Check checks out the realities of art, while art is checking out ours. Thirty-nine international contemporary artists take the temperature of reality in a number of groundbreaking works. Or rather, they extend and turn our normal notions upside down, giving us reality as we have never before experienced it.
The exhibition gives very precise insights into recent art, also bringing in individual older artists who have been forerunners in various ways of the extended concept of art which is prevalent today. The many works comprise all genres from painting and sculpture to installation, photography and video, as well as combinations of them. From works on a tiny scale to gigantic manifestations. There are minute recreations of real rooms, unflinching self-portraits, spectacular interactive installations and tough documentarism. There is the aging DJ Willy, a bike ride on LSD, moving exhibition rooms and a flying steamroller.
The exhibition is based on research into the art of the last two decades and lays out clearly the directions of a number of basically very different artistic productions. What is special about these works is also that they have a particular thirst for reality, which is, however, very far from the stationary and passive registration of the world around us provided by traditional realism. Instead we experience works of art that intervene in reality in radical ways so as to investigate, test and reveal the mechanisms and structures which can displace reality or even reveal it as a construction.
The English installation artist Mike Nelson (b. 1967) is the artist responsible for the autumn exhibition in x-rummet, which is an integral part of Reality Check this time, and extends over a whole floor of the museum. Nelson, who has twice been nominated for the prestigious Turner Prize, has astounded the world in recent years with his great series of rooms and corridors, which are conceptually and architecturally connected in complex scenarios. These installations on a 1:1 scale are based on a web of references to literature, films, history and politics, but they have an immediate and enormous suggestive material effect. Dark-rooms, offices, artists’ studios, changing rooms, gambling dens, private rooms and shops are all among the ambiguous functional references which Nelson employs. His re-use of materials and objects with patina and showing wear and tear gives the impression of recent activity.
Reality Check extends over more than 3,000 square meters of the three large exhibition halls, a whole floor of Statens Museum for Kunst’s white building as well as the front hall and space in front of the museum. This means that contemporary art unfolds itself on a hitherto unseen scale and in a form which both challenges and embraces the museum and its guests. The exhibition not only shows works by some of the most important modern artists, it is also technically the most demanding and spectacular exhibition in the history of the museum.
Participating artists include: Bas Jan Ader (Holland), Pawel Althamer & Artur Zmijewski (Poland), Michel Auder (France), Matthew Buckingham (USA), Chris Burden (USA), Jeremy Deller (England), Elmgreen & Dragset (Denmark/Norway), Peter Fischli & David Weiss (Switzerland), Ceal Floyer (England), Anna Gaskell (USA), Felix Gmelin (Sweden), Felix Gonzalez-Torres (Cuba), Douglas Gordon (Scotland), Rodney Graham (Canada), Aneta Grzeszykowska (Poland), David Hammons (USA), Annika von Hausswolff (Sweden), Jeppe Hein (Denmark), Judith Hopf (Germany), Henrik Plenge Jakobsen (Denmark), Joan Jonas (USA), Joachim Koester (Denmark), Zoe Leonard (USA), Ann Lislegaard (Norway), Enrique Metinides (Mexico), Mike Nelson (England), Henrik Olesen (Denmark), Susan Philipsz (Scotland), Walid Raad (Lebanon), Anri Sala (Albania), Simon Starling (England), Vibeke Tandberg (Norway), Sam Taylor-Wood (England), Fred Tomaselli (USA), Gitte Villesen (Denmark), Danh Vo (Vietnam). |
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Douglas Gordon (b. 1966), Monster Reborn, Statens Museum for Kunst, 2002.
Ann Lislegaard (b. 1962), Nothing but Space, Statens Museum for Kunst, 1997.
Mike Nelson (b. 1967), Mirror infill, Frieze Art Fair, London. Photo: Linda Nylind, 2006.
Bas Jan Ader (1942-1975). I'm too sad to tell you, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 1971.
Zoe Leonard (b. 1961), Mouth Open, Teeth Showing, Courtesy Western Bridge, Seattle, 2000. |
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