Come Closer - 90's Art from Scandinavia and its Predecessors
(Curated by Maria Lind and Friedemann Malsch)
September 10 - November 1, 1998
In this exhibition one can find traces of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish cultural traditions in different pieces and bodies of work, such as the interest in nature, the stress on sincerity focusing on slightly eccentric views of human existence.
The exhibition also relates to changes in geopolitics since the 80's: center and periphery have become highly relative concepts with no one major focal point but instead a whole range of small centers spread over the continent. Those small centers are nowadays in a position to develop artistic attitudes which are simultaneously affected by international streams and independent of them, in the sense that drawing from the mundane, from personal existentialism, they have local connections. They are in other words at once local and global. The situation which is discernable in Scandinavia today is not only a result of the increasing globalization of all walks of life. The first signs were apparent during the 60's and early 70's. Come Closer wants to contextualize the production of those younger artists by including works by older artists such as Marie-Louise Ekman, Öyvind Fahlström, Addi Köpcke, Albert Mertz and Kjartan Slettemark.
Come Closer 90's Art from Scandinavia and Its Predecessors does not want to search for or establish a regional identity. Nevertheless one should not deny the fact that shared attitudes and related practices can emerge under certain conditions in a specific context. This exhibition introduces one such phenomenon f o r t h e first time to Central Europe and thus contributes to break down the widespread clichés concerning "Northern Art".
