INSIDE OUTSIDE ARCHITECTURE
18 October 2013–26 January 2014
Opening: 17 October, 6pm
The National Museum of Norway -
Museum of Contemporary Art
Bankplassen 4, Oslo
INSIDE OUTSIDE ARCHITECTURE is a group exhibition with works by Øystein Aasan, Thomas Florschuetz, Olaf Holzapfel, Marte Johnslien, Ola Kolehmainen, Ingrid Lønningdal, David Maljković and Vibeke Slyngstad.
Architecture has been an influential iconographic and conceptual source for contemporary art over several decades, and many artists today are working at the crossroads between visual arts and architecture. INSIDE OUTSIDE ARCHITECTURE investigates the strategies artists employ when relating to architecture, which can range from examining construction processes, analysing architectural structures, to mapping spaces. The artists allude to and deconstruct modernist architectural icons, reference vernacular architecture and address the fragility of nomadic dwellings.
The exhibition features newly commissioned large-scale installations, wall paintings, photography, painting, slide projection, collages and artists’ books. Øystein Aasan has conquered the museum’s neo-baroque main bank hall with a large-scale installation that oscillates between sculpture and architecture. Being an interior and a shell at the same time it provides room for the insertion of other artworks. Thomas Florschuetz’s highly abstracted and meticulously composed photo works rhythmically appropriate Louis Kahn’s Salk Institute, while Ola Kolehmainen’s photographic approach to architectural structure transforms buildings of Alvar Aalto and Ricardo Bofill into enigmatic mirages. Vibeke Slyngstad literally addresses the reflection of architecture in art with her paintings, which quote Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion and Arne Korsmo’s Villa Stenersen. Marte Johnslien explores the contemplative qualities of a charged interior while at the same time questioning the underlying power structures when taking the meditation room in the United Nations building as point of departure for her installation. Olaf Holzapfel’s sculptures are at the same time analytical and poetical investigations into concepts of dwellings and habitats. Ingrid Lønningdal places her intricate collages based on the analysis and projection of architectural features onto large wall paintings, thus combining inside and outside and David Maljkovic’s slide projection Missing Colours examines the history and the future of modernistic concepts at the example of apartment blocks from the socialist period, emphasising the literal and figurative emptiness of a failed utopia that can be found not just in his home town Novi Zagreb, but at many places in the world.
INSIDE OUTSIDE ARCHITECTURE is the sister exhibition to the retrospective Louis Kahn- The Power of Architecture, which will be on view both at the National Museum’s Museum of Contemporary Art and the Museum of Architecture.
The exhibition is curated by Sabrina van der Ley, Education & events: Line Engen & Camilla Frøland Sramek, Project leader: Liva Mork.
Also on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art:
KjARTan Slettemark.The Art of Being Art
14 September 2013–23 February 2014
For images and further information please view our website or contact Eva Amine Wold Engeset at eva.engeset [at] nasjonalmuseet.no, Media and Press Relations, T +47 21 98 21 62
With kind support from FINNO.
