Parallel Aesthetics
Morten Krogh and Issa Samb in a discussion and performance at Laboratoire Agit’Art
Friday 7 December 2012, 20:30–22h
Laboratoire Agit’Art
17, rue Jules Ferry
Dakar, Senegal
Raw Material Company
Centre pour l’art, le savoir et la société
center for art, knowledge and society
4074 bis Sicap Amitié 2
BP 22710 Dakar, Senegal
Hours: Tuesday–Saturday: 10–7pm
RSVP: 221 863 0248
Raw Material Company welcomes you to an evening at Laboratoire Agit’Art for a discussion and performance between the Norwegian artist and Raw Material Company artist-in-residence Morten Krogh and Dakar-based Senegalese artist Issa Samb on Parallel Aesthetics and radical art practices of the 1960s–1980s.
Morten Krogh (b. 1937, Oslo) belongs to the generation of Norwegian artists that broke with the late modernist art to find new alternatives in the radical art and politics of the 1960s and ’70s. Influenced by Robert Rauschenberg, Pop art and Nouveau Réalisme, he turned from pure painting to the use of materials in assemblage. He was a member of the artist group GRAS (1969–74), printing silk screens and posters with political engagement. Since then he has worked with combinations of painting, different materials, photo and text, within an existential and narrative context.
During the 1970s, Krogh participated in the planning of new democratic and functional organisations, and was chairman of the board of directors of the major art hall House of Artists in Oslo (1966–69), and chairman of the Norwegian Biennale Committee (1980–84). In 1973–79, he was in charge of the developement of the Art Academy in Bergen, where he was principal for 11 years. During 1997–2007, he was professor in aesthetics at Oslo University College.
Issa Samb was born in 1945 in Senegal and lives in Dakar. A knowledgeable part of his artistic production is to be found in his writing of plays, poems, and essays. In 1973–74 he founded, with a group of artists, writers, filmmakers, performance artists and musicians, the Laboratoire Agit’Art, whose aim was to transform the nature of artistic practice from a formalist, object-bound sensibility to practices based on experimentation and agitation, process rather than product, ephemerality rather than permanence. In focusing on the contingent character of actions the Laboratoire was informed by a critique of institutional power where a notion of the socialisation of an aesthetic inserts itself within the wider cultural discourse.
Samb also co-founded the Gallery TENQ—Village des Arts in Dakar, Senegal. A retrospective of his work has been held at Galerie Nationale d’Art, Dakar, (2010). His group exhibitions includes, among others, dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany (2012), Seven Stories on Modern Art in Africa, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (1995), and the Biennale de Dakar (2008).
The practice of both artist echoes a simultaneity that forms the basis of their ongoing collaboration for works yet to be defined. This event is part of a continuing collaboration between Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA) and Raw Material Company for the presentation of the first solo exhibition of the multifaceted practice of Issa Samb in Oslo in April 2013. The exhibition is curated by Pablo Lafuente, Koyo Kouoh and Marta Kuzma.
For more information, please contact Program Manager Marie Cissé at mariecisse [at] rawmaterialcompany.org.
This event is made possible with the support of O3–funds.
