UP IN THE AIR

Tom Friedman

February 5 – June 6, 2010

Curator: Richard Julin

Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall is proud to present Tom Friedman’s first solo exhibition in Scandinavia. Over the past year the artist has been working on a new piece, Up in the Air, for the exhibition at Magasin 3, an enormous installation that summarizes Friedman’s work and his artistic perspective on contemporary reality. In this comprehensive exhibition we are also presenting key works from the breadth of his varied production up to the present day. Tom Friedman is an inquiring artist who follows his own precise logic and creates astonishing objects out of everyday materials. Like an alchemist he extracts the essentials of a thing and then proceeds to turn the ordinary into something extraordinary. Friedman encourages us to question how we see and what we consider to be real. An artistic sensibility that is at once serious, playful and profound.

Curator Richard Julin:

Friedman attempts to understand the world through his work, and every new artwork represents an act of discovery. He hopes to create a space for us viewers to slow down, room to explore thoughts that we have not had previously.

About the artist:

Tom Friedman was born in 1965 in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. He received his BFA in graphic illustration in 1988 from Washington University in St. Louis, and his MFA in sculpture in 1990 from the University of Illinois in Chicago.

He has had solo exhibitions at spaces such as South London Gallery, London; Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo; Fondazione Prada, Milan; the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; as well as the São Paulo Biennale.

For press inquiries, please contact:

Tove Schalin, exhibition coordinator: schalin@magasin3.com, 08-545 680 44, 070-270 86 35.

ALWAYS IN A SPIRAL

Maria Nepomuceno

January 23 – June 6, 2010

Curator: Elisabeth Millqvist

Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall is installing four hammocks and opening the spring season on January 23 with a young Brazilian artist.

Maria Nepomuceno allows her sculptures to spread across the exhibition space like vegetation in a mysterious garden. She uses rope and necklaces as raw material for her work, letting them take on their natural spiral form. For Nepomuceno the metaphor for the body and nature is central. She describes rope as a line, an umbilical cord, and every bead as a fertile point and a possible beginning that can be multiplied infinitely.

In one work a giant bead rests in a hammock while another sculpture is filled with thousands of small glittering beads. Every time she exhibits a sculpture she changes it and combines a part of it with another or takes it apart completely.

Nepomuceno is inspired by ancient traditions and materials giving them new form and content. In Latin America hammocks are places of sleep, birth and death but the artist is also interested in the movement, the rocking motion. The artist will let her sculptural hammocks suspend across the exhibition space at Magasin 3.

She says of her work, “I want to create a situation that feels like transiting from the beginning of our culture to the present.”

Maria Nepomuceno has re-worked existing sculptures and created new ones for the space. The exhibition at Magasin 3 is her second European solo show.

About the artist:

Maria Nepomuceno was born in 1976 and lives and works in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. With a background in industrial design and art she has been actively exhibiting since 1999, most recently in her hometown at A Gentil Carioca (2009).

For press inquiries, please contact:

Tove Schalin, exhibition coordinator: schalin@magasin3.com, 08-545 680 44, 070-270 86 35.

SEVEN WALL DRAWINGS

Sol LeWitt

October 2, 2009 – June 6, 2010

Curator: Elisabeth Millqvist

It’s all about the drawn line. 10 000 straight lines, 22 meters of scribbles and indigo snap lines cover the walls from floor to ceiling at Magasin 3. For six weeks 14 artists and art students have drawn full time. They have realized this exhibition of seven wall drawings by the American artist Sol LeWitt.

The exhibition includes drawings executed in pencil as well as ink washes mixed to the deepest of purples and burnt umber. Every drawing is based on verbal or written instructions; no decisions are made in the process. LeWitt’s role can be likened to that of a composer, the person from his studio in charge of the work is the conductor and the artists executing the work make up the orchestra.

Elisabeth Millqvist, curator of the exhibition:

The descriptions and instructions sound bone dry but the result is startling. It is beautiful, chaotic and overwhelming. The finished wall drawing shows the inadequacies of language in describing what we can expect to see.

With his ‘wall drawings’ rendered directly onto the wall LeWitt changed our concept of what art is – its appearance and who creates it. He succeeded in the challenging task of combining art that puts the idea first with an exciting visual form and continues to be a central figure for young artists to this day. LeWitt was a pioneer among the Minimalists and Conceptual artists who were so groundbreaking at the end of the 60s and beginning of the 70s. In 1968 he made his first wall drawing in graphite and restricted himself to horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines. Right up to his death he investigated every line combination imaginable while over the years expanding his formal language to encompass geometric shapes and color.

This is the most extensive exhibition of Sol LeWitt’s wall drawings in Scandinavia to date.

About the artist:

The American artist Sol LeWitt was born in 1928 and passed away in 2007. A number of retrospective exhibitions focusing on his wall drawings have taken place in the USA since 2000, most notably at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2000), Dia Beacon, New York (ongoing) and the ambitious large-scale presentation at Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams (2008-2033). In Europe the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam presented a retrospective with LeWitt’s wall drawings in 1984, which was followed by an exhibition at Kunsthalle Bern in 1989. In Sweden individual wall drawings have been shown at Galleri Aronowitsch, Stockholm (1982), Moderna Museet, Stockholm (1984), Galleriet, Lund (in 1983 and 1987) and at the Nordic Watercolour Museum, Tjörn, Gothenburg (2002) amongst others.

For press inquiries please contact:

Tove Schalin, exhibition coordinator: schalin@magasin3.com, 08-545 680 44, 070-270 86 35.

OLD CONFUSED

Tal R

October 2 – December 13, 2009

Curator: Richard Julin

Opening on October 2, Magasin 3 will be hosting an exhibition with the work of Tal R. He is currently Denmark’s most internationally acclaimed artist. He describes his work as “Kolbojnik”, Hebrew for leftovers:

I have a pot on the boil all the time and am continuously throwing new material into it

His art is brightly colored and has a deliberately naïve, abstract quality. Tal R is probably best known as a painter but works in a number of media: sculpture, drawing, printmaking, installation, video and textiles. Currently he is also developing the clothing brand MoonSpoonSaloon.

Richard Julin, the exhibition’s curator:

In exhibition form his work becomes a voyage of discovery into a universe with a very direct expressiveness, which celebrates playfulness, spontaneity, imagination and creativity. At Magasin 3 we are showing a unique spacial arrangement with new paintings, sculptures and a great many other objects. In short, an attempt at giving an overview of Tal R’s œvre as it presents itself right now.

About the artist:

Tal R was born in Israel in 1967 and grew up in Denmark. He lives in Copenhagen, where he also has his studio. His most recent solo exhibitions include: Bonnefanten Museum, Holland (2008), Camden Arts Centre, London (2008), Louisiana Museum for Moderne Kunst, Denmark (2007). He holds a guest professorship at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, which he often “swaps” with colleagues at other art academies.

For press inquiries, please contact:

Tove Schalin, exhibition coordinator: schalin@magasin3.com, 08-545 680 44, 070-270 86 35.

SMADAR DREYFUS

11 september – 13 december 2009

Curator: Tessa Praun

British-based Israeli artist Smadar Dreyfus is interested in how meaning is both created and reconstructed at the intersection of the aural and the visual. She has separated image and sound in several of her works in order to present different perspectives on the same scene.

Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall is pleased to present Dreyfus’ first exhibition in Scandinavia consisting of three works, the most recent of which is a large-scale installation entitled Mother’s Day (2006-08). Using sound recordings from the Mother’s Day celebration at the Israeli-Syrian ceasefire-line in the Golan Heights, Dreyfus explores the role and impact of the voice in this contested public space.

Tessa Praun, the curator of the exhibition:

Through the alternating sound recordings and silent images the viewer is placed in a position where one participates in, and becomes a part of an experience beyond spectatorship. The work is liberated from the specific situation and opened up to the viewer’s own experiences and associations. A decisive characteristic of Smadar Dreyfus’ way of working is that she does not produce documentaries despite often using real-life recorded materials. In this way her work retains an element of ambivalence and mystery.

This exhibition also includes Dreyfus’ single screen works 360 degrees, 2007, and UNTITLED (family), 1996.

About the artist:

Smadar Dreyfus was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, in 1963. She has been living and working in London since the 1990s. Her piece Lifeguards was included in the 2005 Istanbul Biennial where it garnered much critical acclaim. Smadar Dreyfus’ work has been shown internationally and in solo exhibitions in the UK and most recently in Belgium at Extra City Kunsthal Antwerpen (2008).

Publication:

In conjunction with this exhibition, Magasin 3 is producing Smadar Dreyfus’ first, richly illustrated publication with a special focus on the installation Mother’s Day. Introduction by David Neuman, texts by Mladen Dolar and Anselm Franke as well as a conversation between Tessa Praun and Smadar Dreyfus.

For press inquiries please contact:

Tove Schalin, exhibition coordinator: schalin@magasin3.com, +46 8 545 680 44

JOHAN GRIMONPREZ

March 28 – June 7, 2009

Curator: Tessa Praun

Johan Grimonprez’s latest work Double Take (2009) is part of the Magasin 3 collection and is here presented for the first time at an institution in Europe. The film is a tribute to Alfred Hitchcock and his popular role as presenter in his own TV series The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1955-65). Material by and about Hitchcock is interwoven with TV footage of the Cold War – a period where prosperity and the American idyll were disrupted by political turbulence. Fact and fiction merge in this experimental film investigating how our perception of reality is influenced by mass media, advertising and Hollywood. The narrative is inspired by Jorge Luis Borges’ novella August 25, 1983 where the author meets an older version of himself. For Double Take the British writer Tom McCarthy has changed the plot to make Hitchcock meet himself. To a certain extent the work is an adaptation and continuation of Grimonprez’s film Looking for Alfred (2005).

The exhibition’s curator, Tessa Praun:
The exhibition also features the work Manipulators Maybe the sky is really green, and we’re just colorblind / YouTube-o-theque from 2006 which is a collection of video clips taken from the Internet’s endless flow of information such as on YouTube and blogs. Again we find a mix of reality and fiction and an imminent risk of manipulation.

Johan Grimonprez will be in Stockholm later this spring to give a talk at Magasin 3.

About the artist:

The artist had his great breakthrough at the end of the 1990s with the work Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (1997) – a film collage of airplane hijackings as shown in different media such as TV news, propaganda films and cartoons. Johan Gimonprez was born in 1962 in Belgium; he lives and works in Brussels and New York.

For press inquiries please contact:

Tove Schalin, exhibition coordinator: schalin@magasin3.com, +46 8 545 680 44

iloveyouihateyou

Terry Fox, Nancy Holt, Leah Singer and Lee Ranaldo, Gordon Matta Clark, Robert Smithson

February 7 – May 24, 2009

Curator: Richard Julin

For more than a decade, the poet and musician Lee Ranaldo and the artist Leah Singer have been collaborating on multimedia performances. Lee Ranaldo is a founding member of Sonic Youth; Leah Singer is an artist, with film as her primary medium. This exhibition at Magasin 3 sees the installation debut of their new work.

The exhibition iloveyouihateyou is based on an audiovisual work which is an exploration of how image and sound interact. It will be staged both as a live performance and as an installation. The exhibition opens on Saturday February 7, 4pm with a performance by Singer and Ranaldo, whereafter the work will be transformed into an exhibition. Their performance work and installations combine a flow of images and sounds taken from everyday situations, moments that reveal the beauty of the ordinary and turn the commonplace into something extraordinary.

The exhibition also features three historic experimental films on the theme of “everyday existence” and the capacity to see the greatness in small things. The films are by Gordon Matta-Clark, Terry Fox, Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson.

About the artists:

Robert Smithson was born in 1938 in Passaic, New Jersey. Smithson is internationally recognized as one of the groundbreaking artist in earthworks. Spiral Jetty (1970), a monumental earthwork located in the Great Salt Lake, Utah is one his most important and well-known works. Smithson produced sculptures, earthworks, drawings, paintings and writings, which have had a profound impact on sculpture and art theory. His work is featured in major museum collections such as The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo. Robert Smithson died in 1973.

Terry Fox was born in 1943. He studied at the Cornish School of Allied Arts in Seattle and the Accademia di Belli Arti in Rome. In the 1960’s he lived in San Francisco where he was a central figure in the West Coast art movements. Terry Fox worked with performance art, video, sound works and sculptures. His works often had a political content and he explored the ritual and symbolic meanings in everyday objects. Children’s Tapes from 1974 is a classic video work where Fox investigates these objects in the everyday life. Terry Fox lived and worked in Europe the last years of his life and died in Cologne, Germany 2008.

Gordon Matta-Clark was born in New York in 1943. He studied French literature at the Sorbonne and Architecture at Cornell University. In Paris Gordon Matta-Clark was influenced by the Situationist movement and as other artist like Robert Smithson, he came to reject the commodification of art. Matta-Clark worked with photography, film, video, performance, drawing, large-scale sculpture and architecture. In the early 1970s, Matta-Clark founded Food Restaurant in New York, together with Caroline Godden. It became a gathering place for art, music and performances. Matta-Clark is mostly known for his work that can be described as deconstructive architecture or ‘anarchitecture’, where buildings would be modified in ways of carving and sawing. Gordon Matta-Clark died at a young age in 1978.

Nancy Holt was born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1938. She studied at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. Nancy Holt is a pioneer in earthworks, public art and environmental sculptures. She also works in media such as installation, film, video, and photography. She collaborated with Robert Smithson in several film and video works, for example Swamp. Nancy Holt has produced site-specific environmental works in numerous places around the world and one of her best-known work is Sun Tunnels in Utah (1976). Nancy Holt lives and works in Galisteo, New Mexico.

Leah Singer (born 1962) is best known for her live film projection work. She graduated from New York University’s, “Intensive Filmmaking Program” in 1988 and from Ryerson University, Toronto, in 1984, majoring in journalism with a focus on film and photography. In her work Leah Singer experiments with 16mm motion picture film imbedded in a 35mm still camera and she calls upon film as an active performance. She utilizes a catalogue of films in an improvisatory way during live performances through the use of analytical film projectors. This way a story is simultaneously formed and fragmented, enabling viewers to encounter variations in corporeal textures and associations, and each performance takes on a new shape. Leah Singer produced a significant body of sculptural work, drawings, prints, artist’s books, and ephemera. Copy, her self-published graphic newspapers produced since 1997and are in the public collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Singer also contributed to the showOld News, a project at CNEAI in Paris Her work has been shown, among others, at the Whitney Museum of Art, New York, at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, at Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, at Rocket Gallery, Tokyo, at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, at the Fundacao Serralves, Porto, at Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris and at the Kitchen, New York. Leah Singer is the partner and frequent collaborator of musician and poet Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth. Their central live film and music performance, DRIFT, has been shown in different venues around the world and was recreated for DVD and released with an accompanying book in 2005. In 2008 they did a collaborative exhibition of drawings, prints, sculpture, sound and video Space Within These Lines Not Dedicated, co-curated with Jan Van Woensel at Hudson Valley Community College, Troy, New York.

Lee Ranaldo (born 1956) is a musician, visual artist and writer. He graduated in 1978 from Harpur College/State University of New York at Binghamton with concentrations in painting, printmaking, and cinema. Lee Ranaldo is a co-founder and original member of the group Sonic Youth, formed in 1981 in New York City. Sonic Youth have continued to record new music and tour the world on a regular basis. Ranaldo is presently touring with “Sonic Youth etc: Sensational Fix”, a show examining cultural works of the past three decades through the lens of Sonic Youth’s activities. Recent exhibitions of Lee Ranaldo includes the Space Within These Lines Not Dedicatedand Drift, both in collaboration with Leah Singer; Possibilities of Action: The Life of the Score, a show on the visual possibilities of modern scores, musical and otherwise; and Old News, a group show centred on artists working with newspapers. Lee Ranaldo is also a member of Text of Light, a group formed in 2001 that performs improvised music to the films of Stan Brakhage and other members of the American Cinema avant-garde of the 1950s-60s. Ranaldo has a vast body of solo and group sound and music works, among others the multi-channel sound installationMaelstrom from Drift, 2006. He has also extensively collaborated on film music projects for Todd Haynes, Olivier Assayas, Dania Saragovia, and Richard Linklater. His own films and videos include Notebook, King’s Ogg, Book of Dreams: A Visit to Kerouac’s Lowell, a series of ‘noise movies’, and many others. His published books include Hello From The American Desert (poems derived from Internet spam), Sorry Matt, Road Movies, Lengths & Breaths and Moroccan Journal: Jajouka Excerpt. Numerous catalogues and publications document his work both as a performer, musician and artist. Ranaldo’s visual art & sound works have been shown most recently at ZKM, Karlsruhe; MACBA, Barcelona; and ISCP, Brooklyn. Maelstrom from Drift, a new solo CD, was released in May 2008.

For press inquiries please contact:

Tove Schalin, exhibition coordinator: schalin@magasin3.com, +46 8 545 680 44

ZIDANE – A 21ST CENTURY PORTRAIT

Douglas Gordon, Philippe Parreno

November 1 – December 14, 2008

Curator: Tessa Praun

In the late fall, Magasin 3 will show Zidane – A 21st Century Portrait (2006, 91 min.), a film work by Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno.

The work focuses on French football player Zinédine Zidane, one of the greatest athletes of our time. During a match between his team at the time, Real Madrid, and Villareal on April 23, 2005, Zidane was monitored by 17 cameras registering his every step, movement and facial expression; how he enthusiastically throws himself into the game, but also how he at times gazes distractedly around, tests the grass on the pitch with his boots, or repeatedly adjusts his socks. Quotes taken from the artists’ interviews with Zidane occasionally appear on the screen. In order to reconnect to the everyday reality outside the football stadium, images from world events of that day are shown during the half time break. Acting on behalf of the artists, the camera crew was guided by the renowned cinematographer Darius Khondji, famous for his work with Delicatessen (1991) and Se7en (1995). The soundtrack to the film was made specially by the Scottish rock band Mogwai.

The film is a magnificent portrait of one of the greatest athletes of our time, created by two internationally established artists who share a passionate interest in football.

Tessa Praun, curator:

Through this very different way of documenting a football player at work, Gordon and Parreno have created a unique real-time document. Despite the film’s suggestive atmosphere, a parallel can be drawn with nature films as a genre – we observe at a distance, we study strange events, and because of the skillfully recorded images and sounds from the stadium, we sometimes feel as though we are standing on the pitch with Zidane.

Football evening:

To coincide with the exhibition, Magasin 3 will arrange a special evening on the theme of football on Thursday, November 27 at 7pm. Margaretha Rossholm Lagerlöf, professor of art history at Stockholms University and Henrik Ystén, editor in chief for Offside Magazine will come together for a personal discussion based on their fascination with football.

About the artists:

Douglas Gordon is born in 1966 in Glasgow, Scotland and lives and works in Berlin. Gordon made his major breakthrough with the acclaimed work 24 Hour Psycho (1993) in which Alfred Hitchcock’s film Psycho (1960) is shown in a slow motion 24-hour long version. Gordon often uses existing material such as cult movies or documentaries and his work often focuses on the concept of memory but also on concepts in oppostion such as innocence and guilt, good and evil. To challenge video as a medium, he employs repetition and shifts in time. Douglas Gordon has won several prestigious awards, including the Turner Prize in the UK (1996), Premio 2000 at the Venice Biennale (1997) and the Hugo Boss Award in New York (1998). His most recent exhibition in Stockholm was in 1999, as part of Moderna Museet Projekt.

Philippe Parreno is born in 1964 in Oran, Algeria and lives and works in Paris. In his work, Parreno focuses on the relationship between reality, depiction and interpretation, while challenging the traditional exhibition as a presentation format. Based on material from public contexts, he adds his own ideas, often in the form of narratives. A characteristic trait of his art is his preference for collaborating with other artists, as in the work ”No Ghost Just A Shell” (2001). Together with Pierre Huygue he bought the rights for the Japanese manga figure AnnLee to save her from inevitable death in the rapidly growing manga animation industry. Philippe Parreno writes for several art magazines and contributes regularly to the Italian publication Domus.

For press inquiries please contact:

Tove Schalin, exhibition coordinator: schalin@magasin3.com, +46 8 545 680 44

BETWIXT

Cosima von Bonin, Paul Chan, Kendell Geers, Mona Hatoum, Sofia Hultén, Jonathan Monk, Gabriel Orozco

September 27 – December 14, 2008

Curator: Richard Julin

Magasin 3 opens the group exhibition BETWIXT with a new work by the Swedish artist Sofia Hultén and installations by some of the currently most renowned contemporary international artists.

The exhibition encourages visitors to focus on the moment between impressions, before moving on from one work to the next. In these in-between spaces, Sofia Hultén has created a work that is integrated with the exhibition, together with works by Kendell Geers, Gabriel Orozco, Jonathan Monk, Cosima von Bonin, Paul Chan and Mona Hatoum. These video works, sculptures and installations are all part of the collection of Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall and were created in the past two years.

Sofia Hultén is one of the most exciting young artists on the European art scene. Her installation is a personal comment on works we have selected together from the Magasin 3 collection. The new work consists of a series of films and sculptures that can be compared to a detective investigation. It is featured between the other works in the exhibition and is based on doors, which are themselves in-between rooms.

Richard Julin, curator of the exhibition.

Artist talk:

A conversation between Sofia Hultén and chief curator Richard Julin takes place September 27 at 3pm.

About the artists:

Mona Hatoum was born 1952. She lives and works in London and Berlin. In the fall 2004, Magasin 3 presented a solo exhibition with the artist including around 60 artworks, as well as a large-scale installation made specifically for Magasin 3. Mona Hatoum has exhibited widely in Europe, USA, and Canada. In 1995, she was nominated for the Turner Prize for her exhibitions at Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (1994) and at White Cube in London (1995). She was included in the Italian Pavilion at the Venice Biennial that same year. The Swedish public knows Hatoum as a IASPIS resident (2001 and 2002) and through an exhibition at Uppsala konstmuseum in the fall of 2003 that focused mainly on her video work and photography.

Sofia Hultén was born in 1972. She lives and works in Berlin and Birmingham. Her latest exhibitions are Mutual Annihilation, Künstlerhaus Bremen (2008), Auflösung, Skulpturenpark Berlin Zentrum, Berlin (2008), and Preparations For Uncertain Doom, Galerie Adler Videospace, New York (2007). In 2007, she was awarded a IASPIS studio grant in Stockholm, and in 1998/98 she won the DAAD scholarship in Berlin.

Cosima von Bonin was born 1962 in Mombasa, Kenya. She lives and works in Cologne. In the fall 2001, Magasin 3 presented the group exhibition Free Port where Cosima von Bonin participated with a site-specific work.

Kendell Geers was born in South Africa. He lives and works in Brussels. In 1993, at the Venice Biennial, Kendell Geers changed his date of birth to MAY 1968.

Paul Chan was born 1973 in Hong Kong. He lives and works in New York. In the fall 2006, Magasin 3 presented a solo exhibition with the artist where two of the first works of the series The 7 Lights were included. The exhibition curator Daniel Birnbaum described the series as “a meditation on a world falling apart”.

Gabriel Orozco was born 1962 in Jalapa, Veracruz, Mexico. He lives and works in Paris, New York and Mexico City. Orozco has participated in the Venice Biennial (1993, 2003 and 2005), the Whitney Biennial (1995 and 1997), Documenta X (1997) and Documenta XI (2002).

Jonathan Monk was born 1969 in Leicester, England. He lives and works in Berlin.

For press inquiries please contact:

Tove Schalin, exhibition coordinator: schalin@magasin3.com, +46 8 545 680 44

LES ARCHIVES

Christian Boltanski

September 5 – December 14, 2008

Curator: Tessa Praun

Magasin 3 has followed the career of the legendary French artist Christian Boltanski since the end of the 1980s. We have on several occasions shown works by him that are included in our collection, says director David Neuman. Magasin 3 opens its fall season with Boltanski’s first solo exhibition in Stockholm. Tessa Praun, curator of the exhibition relates:

Experiences of loss and the need to put a face to anonymous suffering forms the thread that runs through much of Boltanski’s body of work. Our individual and collective memories are central to works that often bear the traces of human life – clothes, photos, letters and other personal material. The exhibition is composed of six installations. Their placement is decided by a specific choreography that winds its way through the structure of Boltanski’s blunt visual language. It is something of a challenge to visitors to experience the variously spooky, serious, but also quite comical atmospheres created by the exhibition.

Central to the exhibition is his new work, Les archives du coeur, 2008, in which Boltanski works like an archivist or ethnographer collecting proof of the fragility of the human condition. Tessa Praun comments:

Up until now Boltanski has made use of personal or found materials. The new work will be created by visitors to the exhibition who contribute by donating the sound of their heartbeat. Starting in Stockholm he will collate an archive of recordings of heartbeats, which will be housed on its very own island belonging to the Benesse Art Site Naoshima in Japan. The thought that my heartbeat will be preserved on a Japanese island is startlingly beautiful – I hope that many people will feel the same way and want to donate their heartbeats.

When a heartbeat is recorded at Magasin 3, the donor of the heartbeat recieves a copy of the sound recording on a CD along with the purchase of the new publication Exhibition Catalogue no. 39 (price 100 SEK). For every Boltanski catalogue sold, Magasin 3 will donate 20 SEK to the Swedish Heart-Lung Foundation’s research on heart, lung and vascular diseases.

About the artist:

Christian Boltanski was born in Paris, France, in 1944. His first solo exhibition entitled La vie impossible de Christian Boltanski took place in 1968 at the Cinéma le Ranelagh in Paris. As a video artist, and as a conceptual artist he has had a prolific career exhibiting in solo and group shows at prominent art institutions and his works have been included in the Documenta in Kassel and the Venice Biennale several times. His most recent retrospectives took place at PAC – Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, Milano in 2005 and at Mathildenhöhe, Darmstadt in 2006-2007. In addition Boltanski has worked extensively with theatre projects for Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris; the Ruhr Triennale in Germany, and many more.

For press inquiries please contact:

Tove Schalin, exhibition coordinator: schalin@magasin3.com, +46 8 545 680 44