Jana Sterbak and Mads Gamdrup
2 March - 12 May, 2002
MALMO KONSTHALL
Box 17127
SE-200 10 Malmö
Sweden
tel +46 40 34 12 94
www.konsthall.malmo.se
Opening Friday, March 1, 7-9 pm.
Jana Sterbak, Sisyphus Sport, 1997, Stone, leather straps and metal buckles, 50 x 36 x 25 cm, Private collection
Two new exhibitions at Malmo Konsthall:
JANA STERBAK and MADS GAMDRUP
Members of the press are cordially invited to a preview on Thursday, February 28 at 11 a.m.
Together with the artists, director Bera Nordal will introduce the exhibitions.
Texts about the exhibitions are below.
For further information or slides before the press preview, or if you want to book an interview,
please dont hesitate to contact us. You can also download press photos as well as texts from www.konsthall.malmo.se.
Opening Friday, March 1, 7-9 pm.
Open daily 11-17, Wednesdays 11-21. Admission free.
Welcome!
Kind regards,
Lena Leeb-Lundberg
MALMÖ KONSTHALL
JANA STERBAK
March 2 May 12, 2002
Canadian artist Jana Sterbak is increasingly establishing herself as one of the most significant innovators in contemporary art. Despite the considerable attention she has aroused around the world, the current retrospective exhibition in Malmö Konsthall is her first in Sweden. It is therefore a unique opportunity to get to know the work of this exciting and distinctive artist. The exhibition highlights different aspects of her art and displays a selection of all her important works from an artistic career of more than twenty years. The works have been borrowed from museums and private collections in Canada, the United States and Europe. In conjunction with the exhibition a catalogue will be published illustrating all the works in the exhibition.
Jana Sterbak had her international breakthrough in 1987 with her work Vanitas a dress made from raw beef. It was a work of art that changed over time and by the time the exhibition closed the dress had taken on the appearance of dried-out leather. That same year she created Generic Man a photograph of a mans shaved head seen from the back, in which everything appears normal until the viewer notices the bar code apparently carved or tattooed in his neck. She has subsequently continued to create surprising works which leave no one unmoved.
The exhibition at Malmö Konsthall includes a number of Jana Sterbaks newer works such as Hot Crown from 1998 and Dissolution (Auditorium) from 2001. Hot Crown consists of an over two-meter-high, stylised “crown” from which there now and again emerge puffs of heat. The opposite, cold, is met in Dissolution. She again surprises us: what we think are normal chairs turn out to have their backs and seats made of ice. The nature and balance of the chairs change the longer the day goes on and the ice melts.
Jana Sterbak creates exciting art works that both amuse and challenge us. She wants us to stop and think. Almost unnoticed, she leads our thoughts into themes such as the relationship between private and public, seduction and force, or man and machine. In her works, she seeks out the often absurdly deadlocked situation that is the condition in which we humans find ourselves today as a result of our own physical and psychological nature. Jana Sterbak works in many different materials, but they always play a decisive role by following and strengthening the concept and nature of her works.
Jana Sterbak was born in 1955 in Prague, Czechoslovakia, but since 1968 she has lived in Canada, New York and Paris. She currently divides her time between Montreal and Barcelona. Jana Sterbak has had a number of major solo exhibitions which have received considerable attention, including ones at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and the Serpentine Gallery, London. Her only solo exhibition in the Nordic region up to now was at Louisiana, Denmark, in 1993.
Mads Gamdrup
Renunciation
2 March 12 May, 2002
In his new series of large format photographs, the Danish artist Mads Gamdrup says he sees the desert landscape as a metaphor for renouncing everything that is unnecessary and retaining a vital sense of hope. The central point of the Renunciation project is a process in which the individual surrenders to the deserts ambiguous nature. A desert is extremely difficult to travel through. It is not just the landscapes tremendous expanse but also the almost complete lack of visible life an absence which forces every living being to carefully husband its resources. Yet a journey across a desert gives the traveller an expanded inner space.
In the space between the sky and the sea, or the sky and the earth, his pictures contain an immaterial dimension which opens up for the observer to reflect upon. The water and earth become surfaces necessary to reflect the light and lead the gaze towards the sky. Change and movement occur exclusively in the sky and in the light. The new works on display in Malmö Konsthall were created in different desert landscapes in North Africa, the Middle East and Iceland.
Mads Gamdrup works with negative colour separation, which allows him to achieve a high degree of precision and colour saturation. The technique is a lengthy one and in that respect has a lot in common with the process of
painting.
Mads Gamdrup was born in 1967 in Copenhagen, where he lives and works. >From 1988 to 97 he studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. Part of this exhibition will subsequently travel to Reykjavik sn Iceland and Saarbrücken in Germany.
For more information go to: www.konsthall.malmo.se