Gunilla Klingberg
A Sign in Space
5 July–19 October 2014
Press preview: Friday July 4, 11am
Opening: Friday July 4, 7–9pm
Malmö Konsthall
S:t Johannesgatan 7
SE-205 80 Malmö
Sweden
In her exhibition at Malmö Konsthall, Gunilla Klingberg unites the cosmic with the everyday, the well known with the mystical. She combines two visually strong works—for which she has already received international attention—with a new transparent work created for the gallery’s long row of windows facing Magistrate Park. She both challenges and exploits the gallery’s functional spaces.
A Sign in Space is an extensive Land Art project, which Klingberg executed for the first time at Laga Beach in the Basque region of Spain. A heavy roller, weighing almost a metric ton, featuring a pattern created by tractor tyres, was pulled by a tractor across the sandy beach in row after row. The wide roller stamped her pattern deep into the sand until the sea reclaimed it. In Malmö Konsthall the highlight well will be transformed into a bit of cosmic beach for the summer.
Parallelareal Variable is based on the lines that create a grid around the Earth and were “discovered” in the 1950s by Dr Manfred Curry. These Curry lines go in a NW to SE and NE to SW direction, that is, at a 45-degree angle to the points of the compass. About four metres separate the lines. Where the lines cross, a Curry cross occurs. The width of the lines varies according to the Moon’s phases, among other things, and the radiation is not just at the Earth’s surface but also far up into the air. No one knows what these much-debated power lines are, which have been detected far back in time by various peoples. Some say they are the aura of Mother Earth, others that they may be a phenomenon of physical planetary radiation. Some people say that humans somehow help to create them. They are not there before we seek them out. For Gunilla Klingberg, the starting point of a work of art is to experience it physically. A sculpture is for going inside in and a transformation is for going through.
Brand New View is a monumental work for the windows facing Magistrate Park. A mandala-like web spreads itself across a huge surface but also brings the rhythm of urban life, the shadows of passers by, and the reflections of the sun into the art gallery. The work features symmetrically repeated symbols and marks which are so everyday that we no longer think about them, but which subconsciously influence us and unite us in a no-man’s land between the public and the private. Malmö Konsthall is already a unique place with its almost borderless transition between outside and inside, art and everyday life. This finds its ultimate confirmation in Gunilla Klingberg’s exhibition.
