Galleri Experimentell Exhibition Openings

Vernissage, Exhibition

Three exhibitions featuring local and international artists curated by participants in the summer course Galleri Experimentell at Valand Academy, exploring experimental models of exhibition production.
Opening 1: 16 August, 18:00-21:00
Opening 2: 23 August 2012, 18:00-21:00

Galleri Experimentell is a course that explores forms of exhibition-making and artistic presentation by turning Valand's Galleri Rotor into an experimental, artist-run gallery space. It examines alternative models of exhibition production, curating and the notion of the curatorial enacted by artists, artist collaboratives, curators, writers, theorists, etc. Touching on such figures as Marcel Duchamp, FOOD, or Bruno Latour's "Making things Public", this course aims to discuss how these structures can introduce elements of invention, play, fiction, performativity and criticism that ultimately complement and challenge art practice itself.
Participants are grouped into teams. Each develops their own exhibition, resulting in a series of three exhibitions to be mounted in Galleri Rotor at the end of the course. Groups will organize all aspects of their exhibition, including formulating and presenting a concept, selecting work, writing a press release, promoting the exhibition, dealing with issues of presentation and installation. The aim of this course is to generate an explosive amount of innovation and production, while at the same time giving participants professional tools to assist in their careers as artists, curators or other fields of cultural production.

Opening 1: The Corridor Expands: A Mind Map-As-Exhibition

Artists: Simone Alexandra (Denmark), Börje Almqvist (Sweden), Minna Forssberg (Sweden), Mattias Härenstam (Sweden), Hendrik Zeitler (Germany). The exhibition also references poetry, films, theory and paintings by T. S. Eliot, Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch, Susan Sontag, RadioLab and Peter Tillberg.

Curators: Deborah Fronko (USA), Malin Griffiths (Sweden), Christopher Landin (Sweden)

The exhibition originated with one artwork, Closed Circuit (In the Middle of Sweden) by Mattias Härenstam, which strongly resonated with the curators, stimulating numerous chains of associations¿such as, suspense, mortality, guts and gore, suburbia, Hitchcock¿s Psycho, black holes, truth, the eye, what is real?, and why are we here? As a way of visualizing these connections, a mind map was drawn to serve as a method of working towards an exhibition concept. However, upon completion, the curators found the structure of the map intriguing and it became the blueprint for the exhibition. Several works by other artists were discovered in this investigation and now play an equal role in the exhibition space. The rest of the entries on the map are illustrated by objects, poetry, film clips, and text on the gallery walls and invite the viewer into an existential and strange exploration. The curators have also commissioned photographer Hendrik Zeitler to build a Camera Obscura¿an essential point on the map¿in the south gallery overlooking Vasagatan.


Opening 2: Thursday, 23 August 2012, 18-21 / Dates: 24-26/8/2011, 12-17

La Turo de Babel

Artists: Per Bäckström (Sweden), Özgür Demirci (Turkey), Mohammad Fadaie (Iran), Allison Hunter (USA), Julie Fournier Lévesque (Canada), Maziar Zand (Iran), Neda Zarfsaz (Iran), Johan Zetterquist (Sweden), amongst others.

Curated by Emelie Storm (Sweden), Yitian Tong (China), Azadeh Esmaili Zaghi (Iran)

The endeavor for universal forms of communication is something humans have pursued for centuries, as seen in the parable about the tower of Babylon, the creation of mathematics, the invention of Morse code, as well as the three different attempts in the 19th Century to create a universal language: Solresol, Volapük and Esperanto. The curatorial premise of La Turo de Babel (the Tower of Babylon in Esperanto) is to engage artists and designers from different parts of the world in an exploration of visual communication that transcends geographical borders and cultural differences. La Turo de Babel will show a multitude of universal symbols by artists¿either commissioned for this exhibition or pre-existing works¿that represents a social position or a political perspective.


Whisper Game

Artists: Barbara Fragogna (Berlin), Clara Ursitti (Glasgow), Alicia Rios (Madrid), Richard Widerberg (Gothenburg), Gareth Spor (San Francisco).

Curators: Ula Lewicka (Poland), Xueyin Chen (China), Rebecca Eskilsson (Sweden) and Anders Karlen (Sweden)

Also known as the game of telephone, grapevine, or loop, the whisper game involves a line of players who pass a message from one end to the other, which inevitably changes meaning as it travels from the first participant to the last. The exhibition Whisper Game takes its inspiration from this game and incorporates its structure into the curatorial process, asking five participating artists to interpret and pass on a message through their works. The whispered message, initiated by the curators, assumes a variety of forms as it wanders from one artist to another. The messages produced by the invited artists will be revealed, in sequential order, in the exhibition space. The five invited artists¿Barbara Fragogna, Clara Ursitti, Alicia Rios, Richard Widerberg, and Gareth Spor¿each engaged one of five senses (touch, smell, sound, taste, sight) in their commissioned works. The exhibition¿s audience will thus be able to experience the various forms of translations and articulation of the whispered message ¿ from silent to loud, from invisible to visible.


To see the previous years exhibitions visit http://www.gallerirotor.com/exhibitions and click on the individual projects under Galleri Experimentell, 2011 and 2010.