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Nordin Gallery Exhibition No 19 | 2010 Carla Åhlander, Gernot Wieland, Sofia Hultén, Ivan Seal, Stas Shuripa Gradual Change! 4 November — 16 December

Nordin Gallery Catalogue 19 - Gradual Change

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Nordin Gallery Exhibition 19 Carla Åhlander, Gernot Wieland, Sofia Hultén, Ivan Seal, Stas Shuripa Gradual Change!

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Page 1: Nordin Gallery Catalogue 19 - Gradual Change

Nordin GalleryExhibition No 19 | 2010

Carla Åhlander, Gernot Wieland, Sofia Hultén, Ivan Seal, Stas ShuripaGradual Change!

4 November— 16 December

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It is with great enthusiasm that Nordin Gallery is presenting the group show Gradual Change! It is an exhibition dealing with politics, including five artists from Sweden, Austria, England and Russia. Unlike many other political exhibitions, this one does not focus on the current political situation in our society, and it does not propose an alternative in terms of communities or utopias. Instead, it focuses on the missing link between a present political desire for a different society, and a way of thinking this desire and its object. The situation is thus this: we are incapable of thinking our desire, incapable even of believ-ing in the possibility of a utopical thought, and equally inca-pable of being satisfied with mere communities. So our politi-cal desire is never discharged in a political thinking or action. Without exception, the works at show treats this gap between desire and thinking with a sense humour – humour might very well itself be a first step towards bridging the gap. But for the moment, we are stuck with our political desire, revolutionary as it may be, unable to give another expression than the cry for Gradual Change! The show is curated by Lars-Erik Hjertström-Lappalainen, an art critic, translator and a lecturer in art and philosophy.

Carla Åhlander (Lund, Sweden, 1966) is living and working in Berlin. She has recently participated in Police the Police, Bien-nial for Young Art i in Bucharest; Time is what keeps the light from reaching us, Liverpool Biennial; Derridas Katze at Kun-straum Kreuzberg in Berlin and Immortality at TENT - Center for visual arts in Rotterdam. In 2008, she did the solo show Terrain at Galerie Andreas Huber in Vienna.

Sofia Hultén (Stockholm, Sweden, 1972) lives in Berlin and is currently participating in Modernautställningen, at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden. Among other exhibitions this year, she has done the solo shows Past Particles at Konrad Fischer Galerie, Berlin; Familars, at IKON Gallery in Birming-ham and Mutual Annihilation at Kunstlerhas Bremen. Two years ago, Magasin 3 in Stockholm presented the group show Betwixt: Sofia Hultén between Kendell Geers, Gabriel Orozco, Jonathan Monk, Cosima Von Bonin, Paul Chan and Mona Hatoun.

Ivan Seal (Stockport, England, 1973) is living and working in Berlin. This year he has done the solo exhibition I Learn By Osmosis at CEAAC in Strasbourg, and participated in group shows like Postface, Essays and Observations and Dunce at Krome Gallery, both of them in Berlin.

Stas Shuripa (Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Russia, 1971), living and working in Moscow. Earlier this year he participated in Mod-ernikon, a show curated by Francesco Bonami and Irene Cal-deroni at Fondazione Sandretto re Rebaudengo in Turin, and Lessons of History at Palais de Tokyo in Paris. He has also done a number of solo shows, like Urban Landscapes at Aidan Gallery in Moscow.

Gernot Wieland (Horn, Austria, 1968) lives and works in Berlin. Recently, his works has been on display in Time is what keeps the light from reaching us, Liverpool Biennale; EAST interna-tional, Contemporary Art Norwich i Norwich, and in the exhibi-tion Zeigen at Temporäre Kunsthalle, Berlin. This year, he has also done the solo show You do not leave traces of your pres-ence, just of your acts at Galerie Andreas Huber in Vienna, and numerous performance lectures.

Nordin Gallery Exhibition No 19 | 2010

CuratorLars-Erik Hjertström-Lappalainen

Carla Åhlander b. 1966, Lund, SwedenSofia Hultén b. 1972, Stockholm, SwedenIvan Seal b. 1973, Stockport, EnglandStas Shuripa b. 1971, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, RussiaGernot Wieland b. 1968, Horn, Austria

Carla Åhlander, Gernot Wieland, Sofia Hultén, Ivan Seal, Stas ShuripaGradual Change!

Opposite page,clockwise from top:Carla Åhlander, Stas Shuripa,Sofia Hultén, Gernot Wieland, Ivan Seal, Lars-Erik Hjertström-Lappalainen

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01–06Gernot WielandPortrait of Karl Marx as a young god, 2009 (videostill)

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Previous page: Gernot WielandKarl Marx as a young god, 2009, (drawing)

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Above:Gernot WielandKarl Marx as a young god, 2009 (videostill)

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01–04Stas ShuripaArrows, 2009 (paper, fishing threads)

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If there is a reason at all to put works of art together in an exhibition, it must be the conviction that it will lead to un-predictable synergistic effects. That is why the task of writing about an exhibi-tion in advance is an awkward one. In the case at hand, the situation is even worse than usual, since I have the im-pression that I never actually did select the works included in Gradual Change! I never had the idea that I would curate an exhibition; I didn’t approach the art-ists, or contemporary art, with a ques-tion or a topic or an idea. The desire to do so ensued from the experience of these works. So, in a way, the works on display selected themselves and proposed the exhibition to me. With a great sense of humor, they all deal with politics. It was like having an answer without a question. By realizing the ex-hibition, I hope to find or construct the question.

No doubt it all has to do with politics, or with our relation to politics, with politics and its discontents. For at least a de-cade, voting without holding one’s nose has hardly been feasible. Ten years ago, I attended a philosophical seminar in Paris, where someone told that, for the first time, a Democrat had been elected in one of the southern states in the US. What made people vote for him was the fact that he was dead. So, a dead Democrat was better than their usual choice, a living Republican. I thought this story pretty much captured our political situation. The reason for this discontent with the democratic system certainly has something to do with the general shift from a society for the peo-ple to a neoliberal society in which poli-tics is in the hands of the economy, and a speculative economy at that. There is

no real alternative to this within parlia-mentary politics, no leftwing or conser-vative politics. All these topics are rel-evant for the exhibition. But I knew this political situation already before seeing the works, and I got the impression that they suggested something new to me, something unknown. So this is not an exhibition dealing with our political situ-ation on a social level.

The works certainly deal with a desire for a different kind of society – a society, not just a community. No, a community will not do. In one of Carla Åhlander’s photographs, People Training Dogs, what we see is the futility of communi-ties compared to the organization of a society. At an eminently political place, a large square made for mass meet-ings, dog owners have gathered to train their dogs, i.e. teach them to obey. It is a picture of a society abandoned by politics, and of a humanity without a caring society. In the background, we see that the thermometer registers 0°C. The fact that the dog educators are portrayed at such a political location indicates that there still might be a po-litical desire, yet one without a proper object. This is also what comes forth without ambiguity in Sofia Hultén and Ivan Seal’s work, Liberal Protest. We hear typical, political choral speech, shouting:

“What do we want? Gradual change! When do we want it? In due course!”

The political situation leaves us no room for agitation for political goals, desires, and thought. We can only claim more of the same, or nothing. We’re living the post-political, but not because our political goals (like freedom, justice,

and equality) have been attained, but because they have been abolished. Still, there is this desire for politics, ex-pressed by the shouting and the ques-tion & answer form. The problem that really concerns us in this exhibition is not our actual society or political situation, but our incapacity to think in accordance with this political desire. We are simply unable to think what we desire. And we are also un-able to discharge this desire in a way of thinking. The rupture between our desires and our thinking: this is the problem. We desire and would like to conceive a different society, the condi-tions of a fair society to come – but we are unable to even think things could be different. That is why craziness lurks in the work by Hultén and Seal (just as it does in all the works in this exhibition). Hearing their work, I came to think of something Sören Kierkegaard wrote. He tells the story about a man who tried to avoid going to the loony bin by only saying things that everyone agrees on – so he kept repeating the phrase “the earth is round” until he was placed in treatment. This is a craziness that per-tains to our very existence today, to our reluctance to admit that society actu-ally could be organized in a completely different way. I believe this might be what this exhi-bition is about: living with the desire for, but without the capacity to form a notion of, a radically different future, a future that not only is the extension of what is today, only adjusted and cor-rected, but is really other. So it is not an exhibition about utopia, rather one dealing with the problem of not being able to see how a utopia would be pos-

Gradual change!Curated by Lars-Erik Hjertström-Lappalainen

“The works certainly deal with a desire for a different kind of society – a society, not just a community.”

Text: Lars-Erik Hjertström-Lappalainen

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sible even as a thought. This incapacity surely functions as a blockage of our political desire, but might also, I hope, be the condition of a truly surprising, spontaneous thought or action. The disorientation of our political de-sire under the present conditions, and the quest for a new way of thinking, is present in the works by Stas Shuripa and Gernot Wieland. Shuripa’s various arrow-works illustrate this thought am-ply, but also complicate it by a play with shadows, pointing to the fact that this political desire remains unknown as long as we lack a proper way of thinking and constructing its object. His work also draws attention to its own fabrica-tion; one can associate it with the kind of therapeutic work carried out at men-tal institutions. Shuripa told me that it also “is a way for the artist to keep him-self busy, as if in the hope, or like in some ritual that prepares long-awaited but still unimaginable transformation of the world.” In Wieland’s film, there is a similar combination of art, or at least picture-making, and therapeutic work: a group of people, or maybe only one person, draws thousands of portraits of Karl Marx. The work deals more with

the other side of post-politics. Not the neoliberal side, but the one of the new communists claiming anew “the idea of communism”. They avoid utopian think-ing, and instead of thinking in relation to the future, they turn to the already pres-ent conditions for a different society. So does the man in Wieland’s film, and he finds them everywhere – in every direc-tion pointed out by Shuripa’s arrows. Streets and emotions are Marxists, but so are also crystals and horses. His in-ability to think the politics he desires comes from the abundance of favor-able conditions at hand. And this point of departure in the present conditions leads, not to a thought, but to a hope resembling Martin Heidegger’s, when he said “only a God can save us now”, but here it is Karl Marx who appears as a young god. If we are threatened by a mental dis-ease consisting in desiring what is the case only because that is the way things happen to be right now, i.e. the pure will to obey, maybe we could find a resort in the thought of a new and un-known future, a future that is a creation. Not a fatum or a factum but a creatum.

“What do we want? Gradual change! When do we want it? In due course!”

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Above:Ivan SealLiberals Anonymous, 2010 (drawing)

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Above: Carla ÅhlanderPotential areas for projection, 2010(digital print)

Previous page:Carla ÅhlanderPeople Training Dogs, (Malmö), 2000(C-print)

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Carla ÅhlanderPeople training dogs, (Mamö), 2000C-print, 119 x 84 cmPotential areas for projection, 201018 digital prints, 34 x 22,5 cm

Gernot WielandKarl Marx as a young god, 2009Mixed media installation, 1 minute video loop

Ivan Seal & Sofia HulténLiberal protest, 2009Sound installation

Stas ShuripaArrows, 2009Installation (paper and fishing threads)

Lars-Erik Hjertström-Lappalainen wishes to thank Annika von Hausswolff

Gradual Change!Exhibition Inventory

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Price: 40 SEK

Nordin GalleryTulegatan 19SE–113 53 Stockholm

Tel +46(0)706 934 [email protected]

Opening HoursThursday – Friday 12.00 –17.00Saturday – Sunday 12.00 –16.00Or by appointment