UNDER KONTROLL AV MALIN LOBELL

Can plants become political? A set of seed bags contain both instructions for flower graffiti, and brings to attention gene modified plants that expose land mines.

For her solo show at Gallery Box, Malin Lobell exhibits methods for different green interventions in public space. Through her work Flytta skog, Tagging with liquid manure, I have a plan(t), Take a walk with the park, she exhorts the gallery audience to become active in the city sphere. By inviting the viewer to participate and execute a series of actions she creates a dialog concerning art, public space and the role plants play in our environment. Central for Lobell´s poetic, conceptual and critical approach is the participatory perspective, human´s relation to nature and the importance of plants.

The title of the exhibition Under Control by Malin Lobell, refers to what we cannot control; invasive plants that hog and become inconvenient as well as addressing what kind of plants that are allowed to grow where in the city sphere and in gardens, which is also highlighted in her work De har ett namn and the series Äbara ogräs.

During the summer, Malin´s work Matsoldater will give shape to the plantation Täppan i beredskap at the Armymuseum in Stockholm.

Malin Lobell is educated at Valand School of Fine Arts in Göteborg. Also visible in her artistic practice today is her studies in Plant Knowledge and Graphic Design. She participated in founding the new network, Stadsodling Stockholm and is one of the initiators to the platform ArtAgent, which aims at strengthening participatory, self-organised and situation-specific art. Her book Att ställa ut i någon annans huvud- om dialog och konstnärliga processer was published by ArtAgentPress, Jan 2013.

http://www.omkonst.com/13-west-side-goteborg.shtml

www.artagent.info

www.malinlobell.se

Galleri Box proudly presents Andrew Bruce first solo exhibition in Sweden – Cold Air Rising, with artworks that address questions about death, time and photography.

“Andrew Bruce photographs wild animals both dead and alive principally using a large format camera, presenting his photographs as life-size analogue handprints. Bruce seems to be searching for some sense of touch and contact with both the photograph and the bodies of the animals he finds.

In his series Tender all but two of the photographs show lifeless animal bodies held against a boyish white human body; seemingly anonymous except for one photograph where Bruce’s face is partially visible. Bruce performs these photographs for the camera. The photographs, especially one showing a rabbit, reminds us of Joseph Beuys’ seminal performance “How to explain Pictures to a Dead Hare” hinting at the philosophical distance between human and animal thought. Bruce presents us with photographs that seem to express the unfathomable nature of our human perception of the non-human world: the Others.”

– Karen Knorr, Artist, March 2013

Andrew Bruce´s first book; Cold Air Rising, will be released in conjunction with the exhibition.

London based Andrew Bruce is educated at the Royal College of Art, UK. For more information about Andrew Bruce go to www.brucebruce.co.uk

NATURAL is Kaisa Luukkonen’s 10^th solo show and her first show in Sweden.  It contains two different installations, named Buzz and Under the Protecting Skies. Her installations often modify and duplicate the ready-made objects to create an alternative universe that embraces the viewer. In her installations the main means of communication is the physical experience created when encountering them.

Kaisa Luukkonen also works with performance and is one co-curator of the Perfo!-club. She lives and works in Tammerfors Finland.

‘Often when describing something as it should be, we say that it is natural. The term is used as a description of almost anything, from food substances to holiday resorts. It is used to justify our bodily functions and actions. This very versatile term is used in so many ways when referring to something wholesome, good and becoming that it seems to become an all-encompassing concept. Even the most contradictory meaning manage to fit under this term.

When things are named opposite or unnatural, they are deemed to be repulsed and feared. It is our last refuge when nothing else can be used to condemn an action, a quality or a thing. When we don’t know why we hate and fear we use the term unnatural.

So natural and unnatural are a pair of those words on which we can reflect the dichotomy of modern existence. Whenever we spot them in a discussion about human condition, social structures or behavior we have to stop and think what they actually represent and replace. What lies underneath the natural?’

Kaisa Luukkonen February 7^th 2013

For more information on Kaisa Luukkonen’s work visit: kirppukaruselli.wordpress.com

The same day at 6-7.30pm the artist will give a presentation and discuss her exhibition, this will be conducted in Swedish.

Me Seal, Baby is also being shown at the  Göteborgs Filmfestival part of the short film program  Svenska Bilder 4

Welcome!

The presentation at Galleri Box was in English.

About Tanya Toft

Tanya Toft curates digital exhibitions and develops exhibition schemes for public spaces, independently and as associate curator for Streaming Museum, an international arts organization that presents multimedia work and programming worldwide on Web-based and onsite installations. She is Ph.D. Fellow at the Institute of Arts and Cultural Studies at Copenhagen University, and in 2012/2013 she is a participant at CuratorLab at Konstfack Universitet, Stockholm. In 2013 she is curating and producing Nordic Outbreak, a touring exhibition project presenting new dynamics in Nordic video and new media art, presented by Streaming Museum on urban screens and projected facades in NYC and across the Nordic region. She has previously curated Cyborg Alarm: When Technology, Imagination and Body Collide for Streaming Museum, presented in New York, Sydney, Melbourne and Berlin in 2012, and co-curated a solo exhibition with French new media artist Maurice Benayoun in New York, and Letters From The Field,as a resident at Node Center for Curatorial Studies in Berlin. In 2011 she developed and produced the online architecture research project URLAB for Fridbjorg Architects, Copenhagen, which investigates architecture’s sustainable value creation for people’s lives in urban spaces. In 2011 she received The New School’s Mixed Messages Award, and her articles on digital media and new media art in urban public spaces have been published in Leonardo Electronic Almanac, Interdisciplinary Themes Journal and MediaCity: Interaction of Architecture, Media and Social Phenomena. www.tanyatoft.com

About NORDIC OUTBREAK

Nordic Outbreak is an internationally touring exhibition presented by Streaming Museum, showing over 30 video and new media artworks by groundbreaking contemporary Nordic artists. It is launching with a symposium at Scandinavia House and a series of events in New York City from April 4 to April 7, 2013. The opening exhibition in New York will be viewed as large projections and on screens and in public spaces. The events encompassing the launch in New York include an all-day symposium and exhibition at Scandinavia House where Nordic artists, curators and theorists will offer in-depth perspectives on what ‘the Nordic’ has come to mean in the digital age, in a situation characterized by globalization and rapid developments in new media technologies, providing new conditions for aesthetic production and presentation. The discussions will illuminate an outbreak from conventional aesthetic ideas about the Nordic concept, from typical modes of exhibition making and curatorial practice, and from fixed interpretations of works that travel across local contexts and contribute to a global dialogue. The panels at the Nordic Outbreak Symposium will address how these influences are characterized in new dynamics in Nordic video and new media art. Nordic Outbreak: Confronting Tales, Futures and Memories, the opening theme of the New York exhibition, presents artworks that question fictional narratives, like the tales that underpin the Nordic concept. These tales have shaped through past and present myths, memories and nostalgia, and in the traditions and rituals of everyday life, which ultimately shape ideas about the future. Confronting Tales, Futures and Memories challenges preconceived notions of ‘the Nordic’ concept as idea and identity. The works have been selected in collaboration with four Nordic guest curators: Daniela Arriado, Birta Gudjonsdottir, Kati Kivinen, and Jacob Lillemose. In Fall 2013, a selection of the exhibition project will travel to all the Nordic countries in collaboration with partnering arts, architecture and cultural institutions and explore a new theme in every local installation. The project will be followed by a book publication in Spring 2014. www.nordicoutbreak.streamingmuseum.org

Galleri Box

Kastellgatan 10

Gothenburg

www.galleribox.se

Find us on the 3rd flor
February 15th -17th

Friday 11–22
Saturday 11–20
Sunday 11–18

BOX will present artist Anna Sissela Gustavsson. In her art practice Gustavsson problematizes the concepts of upbringing, desire and adaptation, letting the sex and toy industry’s underlying mechanisms meet and intertwine through their already common denominators: colors, motifs, designs and materials.

Image: Anna Sissela Gustavsson at Galleri Box 2012 Photographer: Hendrik Zeitler

JOANNA RYTEL: THE SEAL / ME SEAL, BABY January 12th–February 10th

Opening Reception Saturday January 12th, noon-4pm

Video and photography.

Two different videos will be screened during the exhibition period.

The Seal, video, 3:04 min, production year: 2011
Shown between January 12th – January 29th

Me seal, Baby, video, 14.30 min, production year: 2013
Shown between January 30th – February 10th