http://www.overgaden.org/exhibition/index/111?index=0
Autumn has come to Copenhagen and on my way to the Kunsthalle Overgaden I passed the picturesque remains of the old Christiansborg castle.
A reflection on form
At the exhibition hall Overgaden on Christanshavn there are two solo exhibitions at the moment – both part of this autumn’s art festival with the general theme collectives. On the ground floor several rooms are dedicated to works of the Greek artist Yorgos Sapountzis. The title of the exhibition DEUS EX MACHINA covers installations and a video work. In an interview Sapountzis describes that he goes into a dialogue with statues and monuments in Copenhagen:
“These materials may ‘attempt’ to be objects, but for me they are more folds, more drawings.”
He describes his works as containers for the audience to fill up with ideas and viewpoints and is more concerned with engaging in the space between him self and the sculpture than orchestrating narratives to be deciphered by the viewer.
Fragments in the mind’s eye
Issues of materiality, collective and viewpoints are also central in Japanese artist Hito Steyerl’s multimedia installation THE KISS. The kiss consists of multiple elements exhibited in a dizzying dark room. The elements all approach witness accounts of an unresolved crime committed in 1993 during the war in Bosnia. In a 3D scanner Steyerl stages a reconstruction of the mysterious kiss that allegedly was given to an unidentified black man before he and 19 others disappeared in a kidnapping. Most of the bodies were never retrieved and Steyerl thematizes the schism between the materiality of the three dimensional paper print of the forensic 3D scanner and the immateriality of the disappeared bodies.
http://www.overgaden.org/exhibition/index/111?index=0
The exhibitions are shown until October 21
Ann-Sofie Gremaud 