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February 14, 2006

Reality 10.55 Odense

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Overview of Contemporary Relational Art

Reality 10.55 Odense showing at Kunsthallen Brandts from February 18 through May 28, 2006 presents an overview of contemporary relational art, a highly critical and democratic art form that often interfaces closely with everyday life realities and is frequently co-produced in close collaboration with the audience. While relational practices have at times been criticised for their close approximation of reality as an unmediated and unedited image, the projects in Reality 10.55 Odense, offer exciting, new and distinctly visible alternatives to art making and to our experience of art and reality.

This exhibition addresses relational practice on several levels, through performative and situational interactions and enactments. Every "spectator" becomes a potential live action participant/co-creator by actual corporeal interaction, expanding, changing, and transforming the pieces in the exhibition according to their own personal preferences and choices. In a slight strategical inflection, situational interactions, interface with specific situations, realities, communities and social activities most often outside the exhibition space. These practices cast an attentive eye onto issues and images that shape our lives and define our perceptions and do not simply replicate, but offer new visions of reality.

Enactments are a very specific category of relational art making that span many forms, including interventions, actions, performances and performative interactions, and propose a rereading through a re representation of the order of things. Accepted histories, common or standard realities, situations, as well as collective and personal identities are given the possibility of a reinterpretation, a re alignment, a re exploration or a re invention.

The participants in the exhibition represent a wide international spectrum, from Australia to Macedonia, from Denmark to the USA. The artists are: AVPD (DK), Ondrej Brody (CZ) and Kristofer Paetau (FIN), Yane Calovski (MAC), Martin Creed (UK), Alicia Framis (SP), FOS (DK), Jeanne van Heeswijk (NLD) and Marten Winters (NLD), Tine Kortermand (DK), PARFYME (DK), Ward Shelley (USA), Andrew Sunley Smith (AUS), Martin Walde (AUT) and Yvonne Droge Wendel (NLD) and Saliou Traore (NLD).

The Tunnel by the American artist Ward Shelley is a good example of a performative interaction. During the entire time of the show, the artist and a crew of workers, named "termites" build a tunnel through the exhibition hall. During this time, the artist lives in the tunnel (replete with a portable toilet). The tunnel is constructed of wood and steel, forming an overhead passage across the space, climbing the building exterior and re-entering through a window. The passage through the tunnel is only large enough to crawl through, ocassionally widening to accomodate for round-abouts. Visitors can join in the building and climb into the tunnel, and might experience a range of emotive sensations, quiet meditation, curiosity, estrangement, fun.

The situational interaction by Yvonne Droge Wendel and Saliou Traore from the Netherlands, involves a large black round ball that suddenly appears in the city. To begin with, this form has no particular meaning. It is simply big, black and soft, and takes up space. Nonetheless, in time as it moves around the streets, alleys, in and around buildings, and as people begin to interact with it, the ball starts to tell a story all on its own. The people of Odense and the black ball become the protagonists-antagonists of an open ended plot. The story develops on the spur of the moment, depending on the curiosity and bewilderment of the co-story teller. In the process "Black Spot" tests the imagination and spontaneity of the citizens of the town.

For this exhibtion we have a guest curator, Maia Damianovic from Great Britain/Vienna, who together with curator Lene Burkard from Kunsthallen Brandts collaborated with the artists on the development of the exhibition and the projects.

Opening : February 17th. 2006
Exhibition: February 18th - May 28th. 2006

Brandts Torv 1 DK-5000 Odense, Denmark
Telephone: +45 65207000 Fax: +45 65207094

For more information, please contact Lene Burkard at tel. +45 6520 7017 or Helle Thylkjaer, PR and marketing at tel. +45 65207021 or mail: helle.thylkjaer[at]brandts.dk. Press images for download: www.brandts.dk

Posted by jo at February 14, 2006 12:16 PM

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