Walking & Falling

With each step, you fall forward slightly. And then catch yourself from falling.
In Laurie Anderson’s quote, the everyday is paramount. Her observation on walking, on how we unconsciously are falling with every step, constitutes the point of departure for this exhibition, both as an observation and as a metaphor for life. Our sense of balance, the precondition for our ability to walk, also plays a central role in this exhibition.

Magasin 3 curators Elisabeth Millqvist and Tessa Praun have jointly examined artistic practices spanning from the late 1960s till today. This makes it possible for the viewer to experience the present from a different and visually strong perspective.

David Neuman, director, Magasin 3.

The works in this exhibition function as a series of poetic, contemplative, and surrealist associations. Rebecca Horn was fascinated by the way a woman walked and created a unicorn costume for her. During the early 1970s, Horn worked with costumes that elongated the shoulders, fingers, or head and emphasized the body’s movements. In Walking 9–5 Amsterdam (2001), Danica Phelps exchanges ”working” with ”walking.” She walked every day for a month from 9 am to 5 pm, an average workday. Bruce Nauman has examined walking in a number of performance pieces – he has stamped in his studio, walked in an exaggerated manner and in various patterns.

Vangelis Vlahos and Sigalit Landau challenge our sense of balance. In Vlahos’s video Untitled Knight 1 (1997), a knight in shining armor roller-skates in a gymnastics hall, while Landau stands balanced on a watermelon in the Dead Sea.

All the participating artists are represented in Magasin 3’s permanent collection but several of the works have been borrowed for Walking & Falling.