Little Theatre of Gestures
10 October 2009 – 10 January 2010
Kutluğ Ataman, Isaac Mendes Belisario, Iñaki Bonillas, Gerard Byrne, Jay Chung & Q Takeki Maeda, Rodney Graham, Hilary Lloyd, Kirsten Pieroth, Susanne M. Winterling featuring a selection of works from the collection of the Kunstmuseum Basel by James Ensor, Bruce Nauman, Francis Picabia among others
S:t Johannesgatan 7
Box 17127
200 10 Malmö
Press preview Thursday October 8 at 11 a.m.
Opening Friday October 9, 7-9 p.m.
The exhibition Little Theatre of Gestures is about changes. Small changes. Changes that we do to ourselves or to our surroundings. The exhibition attempts to examine and look at how we display these changes, the theatricality of objects and bodies, staged and in daily life. We pose continuously, and depending upon the situation our gestures and poses change accordingly. We practise small scenarios—movements of power and powerlessness—even though we may not know how these movements and gestures can be used, and in which situations they might be appropriate. At times, ”we turn up the volume” of our gestures and poses, or our surroundings become the stage for part of our daily theatre.
The twenty-first century has seen the introduction of many new tools for self-representation. On diverse social www-platforms (such as Facebook, MySpace, etc.), opinions and images of our self are exchanged, and our own private theatre of images from our daily life is staged. Faster than ever, we can be anyone we want, and can create different personas in different media.
Little Theatre of Gestures is not aiming to give an overview on the formal and informal codes that constitute our communication in daily life, but instead to gather artistic positions for a mutual play on smaller or larger deeds. The focus is concentrated on a few artists who deal with gestures on a rather conceptual level, and who present and mirror each other’s interests and approaches: from documentary-like staging to self-staged personas, from staged objects to daily abstractions.
An accompanying catalogue is published by Hatje Cantz publishers (English), featuring texts by Sarah Pierce and Dominic Eichler, and an introduction by Nikola Dietrich (curator Museum für Gegenwartskunst Basel) and Jacob Fabricius (director Malmö Konsthall).
The exhibition is produced in collaboration with Kunstmuseum Basel.
