Sculpture becomes Motion in the Sculpture Park at Wanås
Movement is the theme as The Wanås Foundation’s feature exhibition opens on May 7 and the exhibitions at Wanås celebrate 30 years. SculptureMotion brings together works that examine sculpture and movement and sculpture that invites action both swift and still. Six Swedish, Nordic, and international artists – one of which is an artists collective – participate in the exhibition that also includes moving image and performance. The artists begin with movement – adding, being, reproducing movement, the memory of movement, and emphasizing the dual meaning of the word “movement”: active physical movement, but also movement as mobilization. One of the world’s foremost choreographers, William Forsythe, presents his choreographic objects in Sweden for the first time, and the exhibition also introduces Sonia Khurana. The exhibition program includes a Walk & Talk with William Forsythe, a performance weekend with artist group Mammalian Diving Reflex, and choreographer Maria Hassabi’s outdoor performance Staged which is also part of this year’s documenta.
Press Opening Thurday May 4
Press Lunch at Wanås Restaurant at 12pm, followed by Guided Tour at 1pm with Artistic Director Elisabeth Millqvist. Please RSVP to Bertilsson, press@wanaskonst before May 2.
SculptureMotion: Carolina Falkholt (SE), William Forsythe (USA), Henrik Plenge Jakobsen (DK), Sonia Khurana (IN), Éva Mag (SE), Mammalian Diving Reflex (CAN/DE)
Exhibition period: May 7 – November 5 2017. Opening: May 7, 2017, inauguration at 1pm.
William Forsythe, Nowhere and Everywhere at the Same Time No 3, 2015. Photo: Dominik Mentzos.
SculptureMotion
Movement stands in contrast to what sculpture is commonly associated with – the permanent and static. One artist who challenged that idea was Alexander Calder, who already in 1931 with his mobiles let objects leave the podium and move freely in the air before us. One of the world’s foremost choreographers William Forsythe’s oeuvre is the starting point for the exhibition SculptureMotion. While Calder spoke of Objet ballet, Forsythe talks about choreographic objects, something he has worked with for 20 years.
The artworks encompass slow-motion as well as action; when one artist asks us to lie down, another urges us – Stand up! In thematizing movement, one reference from Swedish art history is Movement in Art [Rörelse i konsten] at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, in 1961, in collaboration with Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, with artists such as Alexander Calder and Jean Tinguely. Now it is time to investigate how artists approach motion today, beyond the mobile and the machine.
William Forsythe is a pioneering choreographer, but this exhibition emphasizes his choreographic objects. He wants to create meaning beyond what we see and to activate both ourselves and the world around us. At Wanås, he fills a room in the Art Gallery, sets nature in motion, and creates a new artwork – his first for a sculpture park. In Nowhere and Everywhere at the Same Time, No. 4, more than 400 suspended pendulums create an unpredictable environment, that the spectators are free to attempt to navigate. Outdoors, he works with trees in Aviariation, and further out in the park is a completely new work. With Underall, 2017, Forsythe has chosen to work with an abandoned house and let a gentle movement be the focus. He incorporates motion into an existing building, throws us off balance. As with so many of his objects, we gain the experience of ourselves by being aware of movement, and by ourselves being set in motion.
In the Art Gallery, Éva Mag has worked with clay, textiles, and metal in sculptures. For Mag, the sculptures are a potential obstacle course, built from memories of motions and thoughts about physical and mental strength. The metal objects in her room are placed so that it would be possible to move along the wall and upwards, to literally “climb the walls,” a metaphor for unfathomable angst and anxiety. In the video STAND UP!, the artist takes on the arduous task of lifting a heavy clay body from a lying down position, in a never-ending struggle. In an adjacent space, Sonia Khurana’s works include a video, instructions, and an ongoing performance, all of which are based on the prostrate body. The video Logic of Birds (2006) is the beginning of a project in which she lies on the ground in places around the world; in another work, she invites the visitor to lie down and become a temporary sculpture, and in an ongoing performance, visitors create a large drawing over the course of the exhibition period by drawing the contours of each other’s bodies on the floor. Khurana makes the seemingly passive act of lying down active.
On a lawn in the sculpture park, Henrik Plenge Jacobsen turns grazing sheep into art that literally walks around. The artwork brings together history and the present with references to a motif from the model farm of Marie Antoinette (1755 – 1793), Le hameau de la reine, alongside today’s agriculture and human relationship to nature and the landscape. Outside the boundaries of the park, Carolina Falkholt depicts travel and motion with her large-scale artwork Train of Thoughts, a 22-meter-long train car that she first painted white and since has worked on with a black line and circles. Both the train car and graffiti are associated with the city, now surrealistically it seems to have landed in the forest surrounding Wanås. The artist group Mammalian Diving Reflex leaves the site entirely to create its first performance project in Sweden. In These are the People in Your Neighborhood, children conduct tours in the nearby community over the June 17 – 18 weekend. They describe the work as “a performance about a very possible world. It is a small slice of utopia.” Through Mammalian Diving Reflex’ participation in the exhibition, the dual meaning of movement is emphasized: a physical term and a collective action to impact social conditions. The artist group describes its work as “Ideal entertainment for the end of the world.” Their method always involves collaboration and often involves the local population as well as children and youth, as in the work Haircuts by Children in which children run a hair salon or a project in which strangers dance cheek to cheek.
SculptureMotion Program
Sunday, June 4, 2pm, Walk & Talk with William Forsythe
Meet dancer and choreographer William Forsythe for a Walk & Talk in the sculpture park at Wanås. His choreographic objects that are a part of this year’s exhibition SculptureMotion activate and are activated by visitors as they organize and create motion. During the tour, Forsythe will talk about his works and relate them to the artworks in the sculpture park. Language: English.
Saturday and Sunday, June 17 and 18, Mammalian Diving Reflex – These are the People in Your Neighborhood
In a guided tour by 9- and 10-year-old youth from Östra Göinge, participants get to meet the people who work and do business in Knislinge. Together with the artists, the children prepare the tours and in the process, they come to know each other and their surroundings, more voices are heard, and a variety of perspectives are created. Does the florist forget to water the flowers he has at home, and does the dentist eat candy? The focus lies on what piques the children’s curiosity in their encounter with society. These are the People in Your Neighborhood in Knislinge has been made possible thanks to support from the Gertrud and Ivar Philipsson Foundation and the Canada Council for the Arts Theatre International program. Further information to be announced.
Saturday and Sunday, August 19 and 20, Maria Hassabi, Staged, outdoor performance
By and with Maria Hassabi (CY/USA) as well as dancers Hristoula Harakas, Oisin Monaghan, and Jessie Gold. Staged is a sculptural movement installation for performers. Hassabi’s intent to stillness and sustained motion is pursued in Staged against the backdrop of the sculpture park as she examines the tension between the human form and the artistic object. The bodies oscillate between dance and sculpture, subject and object, live body and still image. The dancers juxtapose protracted movement with pro-longed stillness, giving the audience time to consider them as images, abstract or embedded with multiple references. Further information to be announced.
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Ongoing exhibition
Revisit 1987 – 30 Years of Art Exhibitions at Wanås
1987 marked the first art exhibition at Wanås, and now, 30 years later, there is a permanent collection comprised of 60 artworks. But what did the first exhibition look like? Revisit 1987 – 30 Years of Art Exhibitions at Wanås is an exhibition about an exhibition that through an in-depth look at archival material such as photographs, films, turns back the time to 1987.
With: Richard Batdorff, Leif Bolter, Bård Breivik, Lao Janis Brieditis, Barbro Bäckström, Stina Ebers, Lars Ekholm, Stina Ekman, Lars Englund, Sigurdur Gudmundsson, Elle Klarskov Jørgensen, Bernard Kirschenbaum, Gustav Kraitz, Ulla Kraitz, Eric Lennarth, Carl Magnus, Truls Melin, Johannes Michler, Takashi Naraha, Staffan Nihlén, Nils Nixon, Tomas Nordberg, P.O. Persson, Annette Senneby, Bertil Herlov Svensson.
Curator: Filippa Forsberg
Exhibition Period: April 14 – September 24, 2017.
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Upcoming exhibitions
Poul Gernes – special projekt
Opening: September, 2017. Dates to be announced.
Jennifer Forsberg
Opening: September 30, 2017
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Opening hours: May 7, 2016 – December 22, 2017
The sculpture park with the collection is open daily from 8am – 7pm.
Art Gallery, Shop & Deli and Wanås Restaurant are open daily.
May 7 – September 30, daily 10am – 5pm
Closed Midsummer Eve, June 23
October 1 – December 22, Tuesday – Sunday 11am – 3pm
Please consult the website for additional information
For questions and further information, please contact:
Sofia Bertilsson, 46 (0)733 86 68 20, press@wanaskonst.se
Web: www.wanaskonst.se
Newsroom: http://news.cision.com/wanas-konst (download high resolution images)
Wanås Konst – Center for Art & Learning, presents and communicates contemporary art that challenges and redefines society, working outside in the landscape around Wanås in Skåne, southern Sweden. The permanent collection in the sculpture park is complemented with a program of temporary exhibitions, both outdoors and in the Art Gallery, and events such as guided tours, artists’ talks, performances and workshops engaging a wide audience. Wanås Konst produces site-specific international art and learning in an innovative and accessible way.
The collection in the sculpture park has 70 permanent works, created specifically for The Wanås Foundation – Wanås Konst by artists such as Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg, Ann Hamilton, Jenny Holzer, Yoko Ono and Robert Wilson et al. The sculpture park has approximatly 75 000 visitors per year and 8000 children take part in educational activities.
Wanås Konst is run by The Wanås Foundation, a non-profit foundation created in 1994, in Östra Göinge municipality, in the South of Sweden, 1.5 h from Copenhagen, Denmark. Founding Director Marika Wachtmeister initiated the art projects at Wanås in 1987. Since 2011 the foundation is led by Elisabeth Millqvist and Mattias Givell. Wanås Konst is part self-financed, part supported by state, regional and municipal funding, as well as by private foundations and sponsors.
Wanås is a place in the world where art, nature and history meet. Wanås consist of a medieval castle, an organic farm, a scenic sculpture park and an art gallery in southern Sweden as well as the newly opened Wanås Restaurant Hotel. Wanås Konst is part of European Land + Art Network (ELAN) and Wanås is a Long Run Destination – a leader in sustainable development within the tourism industry, community development and cultural management. Read more at www.wanaskonst.se
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