Joan Jonas
Light Time Tales
26 September 2015–10 January 2016
Press preview: 24 September, 11:30am
Opening: 25 September, 6–9pm
Malmö Konsthall
S:t Johannesgatan 7
(Station Triangeln)
SE-205 80 Malmö
Sweden
T +46(0)40 34 60 00
Info.konsthall [at] malmo.se
Malmö Konsthall presents Light Time Tales, a landmark retrospective exhibition of works by Joan Jonas. Held in collaboration with HangarBicocca (Milan), the event is the largest survey exhibition in Scandinavia devoted to the American artist, presenting multimedia installations and videos and placing new productions alongside foundational works. The exhibition also highlights Jonas’s pioneering research into the medium of video/film and performance, and how she has continued to evolve and to break down disciplinary boundaries for the past 50 years.
Joan Jonas is one of the first female artists to combine video and performance, and since the 1960s, she has explored the theme of identity and the relationship between the body and its representation, always avoiding any stereotyped image of herself. A great experimenter who is always exploring new multi-disciplinary collaborations, Jonas has invented a personal artistic language that interweaves video, installation and performance, creating a constant renewal of figurative and formal elements that continues to inspire new generations of artists.
Light Time Tales offers insights into Jonas’s constantly evolving artistic formats. It comprises four large-scale installations, including one from The Museum of Modern Art, New York, which together create a constellation of Jonas’s most important works. These range from Mirage (1976/1994/2005) to the more recent Reanimation (2010/2012/2013) and Double Lunar Rabbits (2010). The accompanying single-channel films and videos similarly span from the late 1960s up to the present day.
The title refers to recurrent subjects in her works: namely the aspects of time, light, and narration. These coexist within a single space, where their interrelation aims to produce new perspectives while emphasizing the cyclical nature of the artist’s praxis.
Gregory R. Miller & Co., in association with Hatje Cantz, HangarBicocca, and Malmö Konsthall, have published The Work of Joan Jonas: In the Shadow a Shadow (edited by Joan Simon), the most comprehensive monograph to date on the work of the artist.
To accompany this iteration of the exhibition, Malmö Konsthall, Malmö Art Academy (Lund University), and The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Visual Arts, are devising a two-day conference to take place in late November around core aspects explored by Jonas’s works. For further details, please visit Malmö Konsthall’s website.
Curators: Andrea Lissoni, Diana Baldon
Biography
Joan Jonas was born in 1936 in New York, where she currently lives and works. She is one of the first female artists to combine video and performance and is the author of reference books on performance art. Over an artistic career spanning more than five decades, Jonas has received honors from numerous institutions, including: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation (1976) and The Rockefeller Foundation (1990), as well as recognitions like the CAPS Award (1971/1974), the Maya Deren Award (given by the American Film Institute) (1989), and the Anonymous Was A Woman Award (1998). She has held solo shows and performances at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1994); Queens Museum of Art, New York (2004); Dia:Beacon, Beacon, NY (2005); Castello di Rivoli (2006); MACBA, Barcelona (2007); MoMA, New York (2010); Bergen Kunsthall, Norway (2011); Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; Proyecto Paralelo, Mexico City; and Kulturhuset, Stockholm (all 2013); and Centre for Contemporary Art, Kitakyushu (2014). The artist has also participated in numerous group shows over the past 30 years, including the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009), as well as various editions of Documenta in Kassel (1972, 1977, 1982, 1987, 2002, 2012). She is currently representing the United States at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015), with an exhibition presented by MIT–Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s List Visual Arts Center. Jonas is Professor Emerita at MIT, Boston.
