Agnieszka Kurant
exformation
1 December 2013–23 February 2014
Stroom Den Haag
Hogewal 1-9
2514 HA The Hague
The Netherlands
Hours: Wednesday–Sunday noon–5pm,
closed December 26 and January 1
T +31 70 3658985
info [at] stroom.nl
A version of The New York Times from the year 2020 assembled by messages from a professional clairvoyant and written by NYT journalists, a collection of books imagined in other books, conceptual artworks that hitherto only existed as suggestions, a soundtrack of silences from famous public speeches, works in ink that disappears and reappears depending on the weather, a film of characters that were edited out of Hollywood movies, a levitating meteorite.
In her first solo show in the Netherlands, taking place at Stroom Den Haag, Agnieszka Kurant will present existing works as well as two new ambitious works that explore the editing process as an aesthetic and political act as well as accumulations and potentials of phantom capital. The exhibition will feature a new film, Cutaways, produced in collaboration with the renowned film editor Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now, The Godfather). The film is a portrait of the invisible universe of characters that have been completely deleted from the final cut of feature films—a no man’s land of surplus characters and deleted narratives. Cutaways narrates the encounter of three cut-out characters from American films (Vanishing Point, The Conversation and Pulp Fiction) to create a new narrative based on surplus content and labor.
The new installation Phantom Estate furthers Kurant’s investigation into hybrid authorship. The work consists of phantom works: pieces based on unfinished, barely mentioned and rumored works of several deceased conceptual artists. The work includes an artificial intelligence unit inspired by Kurant’s conversations with the Belgian AI scientist Luc Steels and a mobile and transforming architecture for which she collaborated with the French architect Didier Faustino.
Kurant investigates how phantoms, fictions, the things left out, and rumors influence social, economic and political systems of the contemporary world. The artist explores the hybrid and shifting status, value, aura, authorship, production, and ownership of objects. Analyzing the ‘unknown unknowns’ of knowledge, mutations of memes, immaterial labour, collective intelligence and its unconscious, she seeks to explore gaps in logic that confuse and inform our understanding of reality.
Agnieszka Kurant was born in 1978, in Poland; she lives and works in New York. She represented Poland at the Venice Biennale in 2010 (in collaboration with the architect Aleksandra Wasilkowska) and has exhibited her work in solo and group exhibitions at Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp (2012); CoCA, Torun, PL (2012); Witte de With, Rotterdam (2011); Performa, New York (2009); Athens Biennale (2009); Frieze Projects, London (2008); Moscow Biennale (2007); Tate Modern, London (2006); Mamco, Geneva (2006); and Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2004), among others. Kurant was an artist in residence at Location One, New York (2011–2012); the Paul Klee Center (Sommerakademie), Bern (2009); ISCP, New York (2005); and Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2004). In 2009 she was shortlisted for the International Henkel Art Award (MUMOK, Vienna). Sternberg Press published Kurant’s monograph Unknown Unknown in 2008.
The exhibition at Stroom Den Haag will take place in conjunction with a solo show by Agnieszka Kurant at the Sculpture Center New York (November 10, 2013 to January 27, 2014).
On the occasion of Agnieszka Kurant’s show at Stroom Den Haag, Diedrich Diederichsen has written a text on her work. This text, presented as a small booklet designed by Atelier Carvalho Bernau, will be for sale.
Stroom School
Stroom School is the umbrella term for the side program accompanying exhibitions. Themes are highlighted and more profoundly explored. The Stroom School of Agnieszka Kurant consists of a number of guided tours, workshops and an evening with talks on her work.
Stroom Den Haag is supported financially by the city of The Hague. The program is made possible in part by the Mondriaan Fund, Stichting DOEN and the Creative Industries Fund NL. Partner for the exhibition by Agnieszka Kurant is Sculpture Center New York with additional support by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Poland.
