Padiglione Paesi Nordici

The exhibition 'Mirrored' will be presented in the 2017 edition of the Nordic Pavilion at the 57th International Art Exhibition, la Biennale di Venezia. 'Mirrored' is a group exhibition featuring works by six artists from different generations: Siri Aurdal, Nina Canell, Charlotte Johannesson, Jumana Manna, Pasi “Sleeping” Myllymäki, and Mika Taanila.

'The artists in "Mirrored" present a mapping of connections that override the national and regional boundaries, and instead track a more multi-faceted view of how artistic practice may connect', says curator Mats Stjernstedt.

The exhibition 'Mirrored' attempts to avoid a topical approach, to focus on challenging a self-image reflected in, or stereotypes projected on, the Nordic countries. 'Mirrored' thus suggest a 'placeless place', to borrow Guiliana Bruno’s allegory on mirrors.

Siri Aurdal (b.1937), Charlotte Johannesson (b.1943), and Pasi “Sleeping” Myllymäki (b.1950) are innovators who, to some extent, have created and articulated the artistic realms they later came to work within. All three artists can be described as atypical for the Nordic Pavilion’s extended architecture, as much landscape and outdoor experience as an enclosed space. Their works are examples of urban art and urbanity that was ahead of its time in exploring industrial material, digital space, or design experiments with moving images. Aurdal’s module-based sculptures challenge the sculpture medium and establish new premises for it. Johannesson took her cue from traditional textile crafts and translated the logical setup of tapestries into computer-based pixels. Before giving up his film practice, Myllymäki produced forty-four super-8 films from 1976 to 1985; these films explore a wide range of elements from graphic design to performative actions.

A similar interest in urban subject matter, expressed, for instance, through material transformation or political content, intersects the works of the following artists: Mika Taanila (b.1965) is primarily recognised for producing temporal artworks in film, video and sound. For the present exhibition, Taanila uses montage technique to create a cut-out project in cinematic literature. Nina Canell’s (b.1979) experimental mode of relating to sculpture and installation, considers the place and displacement of energy. However, like Taanila’s film and sound work, they have a temporal quality, as Canell converts sculpture’s often fixed form into open-ended processes. The works of Jumana Manna (b.1987) explore how power is articulated through relationships, often focusing on the body and materiality in relation to narratives of nationalism, and histories of place. In her sculptural work, Manna indirectly unfolds representation, creating a visual language of absence and substitutes.

The Nordic Pavilion 

The Nordic Pavilion, by Norwegian architect Sverre Fehn, was completed in 1962 and has since been a space for collaboration between three nations – Sweden, Finland and Norway. For the past three biennials, a format was introduced which involved the solo commissioning of a project by each country in turn. For the period 2017–2021, the art in the Nordic Pavilion will be presented as a joint project, where the three countries are represented on equal terms. The countries will alternate as principal commissioner and manager of activities at the Nordic Pavilion as follows: 2017, Moderna Museet, Sweden; 2019, Frame Contemporary Art Finland, Finland; 2021, Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA).

Siri Aurdal 

 Siri Aurdal (b.1937) lives and works in Oslo, Norway. Aurdal has exhibited at Oslo Kunstforening, Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, and Murray Guy, New York, and has participated in group exhibitions at Arkiv för dekorativ konst / Skissernas Museum, Lund, the 15th Biennial, Antwerp, Kunsthall Oslo, and Stavanger Kunsthall. A major sculptural work, Wavelengths – Recomposed, was installed in Oslo’s Vigeland park in 2016, as a joint project between Kunstnernes Hus and OSLO PILOT, Kulturetaten, the City of Oslo.

Nina Canell 

 Nina Canell (b.1979) lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Canell has exhibited at Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, Hamburger Bahnhof, Camden Arts Centre, London, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Arko Art Center, Seoul, and in 2017 at Museum Tamayo, Mexico City. She has participated in various group exhibitions at several art institutions, including Biennale de Lyon, Sydney Biennale, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Liverpool Biennale, Tate Liverpool, and Manifesta 7, Rovereto. Canell was an Edstrandska Stiftelsen laureate in 2011, and was awarded the ars viva Prize for Visual Arts the same year.

Charlotte Johannesson 

 Charlotte Johannesson (b.1943) lives and works in Skanör, Sweden. She has exhibited at Galerie S:t Petri, Lund, Konstmuseet, Ystad, Galleri Glemminge, Gelmmingebro, Galerie Green, Malmö, Dexter Bang Sinister, Kunsthall Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, and Galleri Petra Lilja, Malmö, and has participated in various group exhibitions, including the 32nd São Paolo Biennale, the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Barbican Art Gallery, London, Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Norrköpings Konstmuseum, Museum of Modern Art, Toyama, Pratt Center, New York, Academy of Art College Gallery, San Francisco, Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris, Air Gallery, New York, Malmö Konsthall, and Kulturhuset, Stockholm. Johannesson was awarded the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts scholarship in 1976. In 2016, she was a laureate of the Aase & Richard Björklund Fund.

Jumana Manna 

 Jumana Manna (b.1987) lives and works in Berlin, Germany. She has exhibited at SculptureCenter, New York, Chisenhale Gallery, London, and Beirut Art Center. She has participated in group exhibitions at Kunsthalle Wien, the Liverpool Biennial, the 20th Biennale of Sydney, Marrakech Biennale 6, the Jerusalem Show VII, Al Ma’mal Foundation, and Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Bærum. Manna’s films have been screened at festivals and institutions such as M+, Hong Kong, the 54th Viennale International Film Festival, Guggenheim, New York, Filmlab: Days of Cinema, Ramallah, Tate Modern, London, Performa13 Biennial, New York, and IFFR Rotterdam. She was awarded the A.M. Qattan Foundation’s Young Palestinian Artist Award in 2012, and is the ars viva Prize for Visual Arts laureate in 2017. In 2017, she is engaged in commissions for the Satellite Program 10, Jeu de Paume, Paris and CAPC Bordeaux, and for The HighLine, New York.

Pasi “Sleeping” Myllymäki 

 Pasi “Sleeping” Myllymäki (b.1950) is a filmmaker based in Hämeenlinna, Finland. Myllymäki’s films have been screened widely at festivals and art institutions in Finland and internationally, including Unica, Baku, The Kitchen, New York, Hämeenlinna Art Museum, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Rajaton Elokuva Event, Joensuu, Avanto Festival, Kiasma, Helsinki, Nordisk Panorama, Oulu, VIDEO-EX, Zürich, Kauniita uneksijoita-event, Kino Kaiku, Malmitalo, Helsinki, Avant Goes Witty, Karlstad, IFFR, Rotterdam, Kinos Festival, Lahti, AAVE Festival, Helsinki, Rakkautta ja Anarkiaa Film Festival , Helsinki, and VIDEOMEDEJA Film Festival, Novi Sad.

Mika Taanila 

 Mika Taanila (b.1965) lives and works in Helsinki, Finland. Taanila has exhibited at Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Migrosmuseum, Zürich, and Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe. He has participated in the following selected group exhibitions: documenta (13), Kassel, Aichi Triennale, Nagoya, Manifesta 4, Frankfurt-am-Main, and Shanghai Biennale. Taanila’s films have been screened at numerous international film festivals and special events, including the Toronto International Film Festival, IFFR Rotterdam, Berlinale, CPH:DOX, International Short Film Festival Clermont-Ferrand, Midnight Sun Film Festival, Sodankylä, and Oberhausen Kurzfilmtage. In 2015, he was presented with the Ars Fennica Award.

Mats Stjernstedt has been Director of Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo since 2011, and was appointed Director for Malmö Konsthall from January 2017.

Mika Taanila alla 57th Biennale di Venezia per i Padiglioni Nordici

Balzer Projects is pleased to announce that visual artist and filmmaker Mika Taanila has been selected as one of six artists in the Nordic Pavilion at the 57th Biennale (Curator: Mats Stjernstedt, Moderna Museet, Stockholm).

As part of the group exhibition Mirrored in the Nordic Pavilion of the 57th Venice Biennale Taanila will show several series with new works, each consisting of multiple books related to cinema. Each book is “re-edited” by the artist. Instead of text editing, the books are “treated” with various instruments and tools such as knives, scissors, scalpels, drills and handguns, creating a process parallel to traditional film editing, i.e. splicing. These books are works of “moving image“, quite literally: images are moved and taken out, erased, cut-out, transformed and discarded. Immaterial ideas of cinematic writing/reading transform into eerie cinematic collages.

The works of Mika Taanila evolve in the realms of art, photography, experimental music, and (documentary) film. At the core of his oeuvre is the use of archival and found footage; this approach of cinematographic archaeology enables Taanila to create new material in which media obsoleteness and belief in the future collide and recontextualize. Thematically, Taanila’s work deals with archiving and the gradual loss of memory which is reflected also by using analogue as well as digital technologies.
 

PREMIERE OF VIDEO-INSTALLATION AT BALZER PROJECTS IN BASEL

Balzer Projects is pleased to announce the premiere of Taanila’s most recent projects, a video installation and book project, both entitled The Earth Who Fell To Man. The exhibition is also on view parallel to Art Basel.

 

The video installation The Earth Who Fell to Man is a sequel to Taanila’s reductionist film and sound pieces, such as My Silence from 2013. The elimination of the core of the film, the eradication of human form, transforms the film into a ‘deleted narrative’. The piece features shots from Nicolas Roeg’s legendary film The Man who Fell To Earth (1976) starring David Bowie, yet without any recognizable human resemblance. Merely landscapes, building, backdrops, roads, sky and the earth are running in total disarray. The key element: mankind, or in this case the alien Thomas Jerome Newton in the iconic embodiment of David Bowie, is systematically deleted.

The shots are running upside down on screen and are enhanced with the acoustical accompaniment of earthquakes, falling rocks and landslides. The Earth (as the title suggests) seems to be falling to Man.

 

On view will also be a copy of the original novel, The Man Who Fell To Earth. Its cover has been worked on by the artist and its core element, the man (David Bowie), has been removed. Merely the silhouette of the profile remains, revealing parts of the text on the first page below. 

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Mika Taanila (*1965) lives and works as filmmaker and visual artist in Helsinki. His works have been exhibited in important international group shows, including Aichi Triennale (2013), dOCUMENTA (2012), Shanghai Biennale (2006), Berlin Biennale (2004), Manifesta (2002) and the Istanbul Biennale (2001). His solo shows include balzer projects, Basel (2016), Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki (2013-14), Museum of Contemporary Art St. Louis (2013), TENT, Rotterdam (2013), Galleria Heino, Helsinki (2010), Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe (2008), Dazibao, Montrèal (2007) and Migrosmuseum, Zurich (2005). Taanila's films have been featured at more than 300 international festivals and special events, including the Berlinale (Forum Expanded), Toronto International Film Festival, IFFR Rotterdam, the International Short Film Festival in Clermont-Ferrand, Karlovy-Vary Film Festival, Midnight Sun Film Festival, CPH: DOX, IDFA in Amsterdam and the Oberhausen Kurzfilmtage. In 2015 he received the prestigious Ars Fennica award. A retrospective of his cinematic work will be shown at GEGENkino in Leipzig in April 2017. One of his most recent experimental films, entitled Branches, was not only selected for the international competition of the 63. Oberhausen Kurzfilmtage (11 – 16 May), but will also be on view at TAPE Basel (12 – 17 June).

Mats Stjernsted per i Padiglioni Nordici

Mats Stjernstedt è stato nominato curatore per il Padiglione dei Paesi Nordici (Norvegia, Finlandia e Svezia), ne ha dato notizia il Moderna Museet 

English

Mats Stjernstedt will curate the joint exhibition of Finland, Norway and Sweden in the Nordic Pavilion at the 57th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia 2017. The exhibition marks the rejuvenation of the Nordic collaboration between the three countries.

The art in the Nordic Pavilion will be presented as a joint project, where the three countries are represented on equal terms. As before, the countries will take turns as principal commissioner and manager of activities at the Nordic Pavilion as follows:

2017: Moderna Museet, Sweden

2019: Frame Visual Art Finland, Finland

2021: Office for Contemporary Art (OCA), Norway

Moderna Museet has thus appointed Mats Stjernstedt to curate the Nordic Pavilion in 2017. Stjernstedt is the artistic director of Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo since 2011. He has curated numerous exhibitions internationally over the years.

“Being asked to assemble an exhibition for the Nordic Pavilion is an honour and a challenge. I appreciate being entrusted this assignment and look forward to combining my experience with research over the next few months. I also look forward to presenting interesting artists who are active in the Nordic countries, within the compelling framework of La Biennale di Venezia,” says Mats Stjernstedt.

The Nordic Pavilion for the Venice Biennial was completed in 1962 and has since been a space for collaboration between three nations – Sweden, Finland and Norway. Built on a plot between the pavilions of the United States and Denmark, it is situated in the Biennale grounds at Giardini in Venice. For the last three biennials of 2011, 2013 and 2015, a format was developed which involved the solo commissioning by each country of a project. For the period 2017–2021 the agreement entailing that all three countries are represented on equal terms, will be resumed.

‘Rapture’ A project by Camille Norment

Commissioner: Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA) 

Curator: Katya Garcia-Anton, Director, OCA, in collaboration with Antonio Cataldo, Senior Programmer, OCA 

9 May–22 November 2015 

Press and professional preview: 6–8 May 2015

The Nordic Pavilion 

Giardini, Venice 

Italy

www.oca.no

The Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA) is pleased to announce the official inauguration of the Nordic pavilion in the 56th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, by Her Majesty Queen Sonja of Norway in the presence of Her Royal Highness Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway, on 6 May, 2015. This year Norway will be solely responsible for the Nordic Pavilion at the Venice Biennale for the first time in its history. For this unprecedented occasion, OCA has commissioned artist Camille Norment (b. 1970) to develop the project.

Norment’s ‘Rapture’ is a site-specific, sculptural and sonic installation in the Nordic Pavilion, for which the American-born, Oslo-based artist has composed new music on the glass armonica – a legendary 18th-century instrument that creates ethereal music from glass and water. Invented by Benjamin Franklin and once played by Mozart and Marie Antoinette, the glass armonica was at first celebrated for curing people with its entrancing music, but later it was banned because it was thought to induce states of ecstasy and arouse sexual excitement in women. If it had the power to cure, so the logic went, this bewitching instrument might also have the power to kill through over-exciting its listeners.

In a contemporary context, Norment explores the tensions this music raises today by creating a multi-sensory space, which reflects upon the history of sound, contemporary concepts of harmony and dissonance, and the water, glass and light of Venice. She is composing a new chorus of voices that correspond to the notes of the glass armonica, and this chorus will surround visitors to ‘Rapture’. She will also perform a new composition on the glass armonica during the opening days of the Venice Biennale. Additionally, throughout the run of the Biennale, she will invite artists and musicians to participate in a series of performances that echo elements in the installation.

‘Rapture’ will explore the relationship between the human body and sound, through visual, sonic, sculptural and architectural stimuli. Today the sonic realm can be both a space of misuse, as we have seen in the militaristic use of sound to abuse the body, and of affirmation, as in the performative utterance of free speech to affirm the right of the body’s very existence. The body can be stimulated and moved by sound, and in Norment’s work, the Nordic Pavilion itself becomes a body in rapture and rupture, harmony and dissonance.

Camille Norment comments: ‘Sound, by its nature, permeates borders – even invisible ones. Throughout history, fear has been associated with the paradoxical effects music has on the body and mind, and its power as a reward-giving de-centraliser of control. Recognised as capable of inducing states akin to sex and drugs, music is still seen by many in the world as an experience that should be controlled – especially in relation to the female body – and yet it is also increasingly used as a tool for control, especially under the justifications of war.’

Katya Garcia-Anton, Director of OCA, Norway and Curator of the Nordic Pavilion comments: ‘We have commissioned Camille Norment to represent Norway at the Nordic Pavilion of the Venice Biennale 2015 because she is one of the most innovative, cross-disciplinary artists working in Norway today. Her work is both poetic and physical, and considers sound as an evocative artistic medium. Norment is an American-born artist, who has chosen for over a decade to live and work in Oslo, which reflects the stimulating environment for experimental contemporary art and culture in the Norwegian capital and around the country. We wish to celebrate this on the occasion of Norway's first ever Nordic Pavilion.’ 

To see images of Camille Norment and to hear a sound clip of Camille Norment's music, click here.

For international media enquiries, interview opportunities and images please contact: 

Sarah Greenberg, on +44 (0)7866 543 242 or sgreenberg@evergreen-arts.com, www.evergreen-arts.com

For media enquiries in Norway please contact OCA's Communications Manager, 

Tara Hassel on +47 90 080554 or tara.hassel@oca.no, www.oca.no

About Camille Norment 

Camille Norment (b. 1970, Silver Spring, Maryland, USA lives and works in Oslo, Norway) works as an artist, musician and composer. Norment’s practice includes performance, installation, drawing, writing and sound, and draws from the artist’s training in music, dance, the visual arts and literature. Norment is concerned with investigating the relationships between sound, music and the visual arts and questioning the meanings of harmony and dissonance. Her art explores the socio-political encoding of sound historically and in the present, reflecting upon the power of dissonance to carve out a space for dissent and creative thinking. 

Currently, Norment is part of the exhibition `Poor Art ­– Rich Legacy. Arte Povera and Parallel Practices 1968–2015’, opening at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Oslo on 13 March 2015. She has exhibited and performed extensively, including at MoMA (Museum of Modern Art), New York (2013); The Kitchen, New York (2013), Transformer Station (The Cleveland Museum of Art), Cleveland, OH, USA (2013), The Museum of Contemporary Art (The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design), Oslo (2012, the museum commissioned a new performance to accompany the exhibition tour in Norway); The Thessaloniki Biennale, Thessaloniki, Greece (2007); Kunsthalle Bern, Bern, Switzerland (2009); UKS, Oslo (2004); Bildmuseet, Umeå, Sweden (2004); the Charlottenborg Fonden, Copenhagen, Denmark (2003); Radioartemobile, Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (2003); The Santa Monica Museum of Art, Los Angeles (2001); and The Studio Museum of Harlem, New York (2001). Among several public artwork commissions, a permanent outdoor sound installation was commissioned by the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter (HOK), Høvikodden (outside Oslo), Norway, in 2011. 

In addition to her work as an artist, Norment performs as a soloist, with other musicians in selected projects, and with her ensemble, the Camille Norment Trio, consisting of Vegar Vårdal (Norwegian hardanger fiddle), Håvard Skaset (electric guitar), and Camille Norment (glass armonica).

About the Nordic Pavilion 

In 1958 Norwegian architect Sverre Fehn won the competition to design the Nordic Pavilion for the Venice Biennial. The building was completed in 1962 and has since been a space for collaboration between three nations—Norway, Sweden and Finland. Built on a plot between the pavilions of the United States and Denmark, it is centrally situated on one of the main arteries of the Giardini. Fehn was later awarded the prestigious Prizker Prize for architecture in 1997. In 2015 Norway will be in sole charge of the pavilion for the first time in its history.

About Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA) 

OCA is a foundation created by the Norwegian Ministries of Culture and of Foreign Affairs in 2001 with the aim of developing cultural collaborations between Norway and the international arts scene. The foundation aims to become one of the main organs in the international contemporary arts debate through initiatives such as exhibitions, seminars and publications, as well as by providing support to Norwegian artists for their activities in the international art arena and inviting international curators and artists to Norway. OCA has been responsible for Norway's contribution to the visual arts section of the Venice Biennale since 2001.