Dora García: I Always Tell the Truth / Peter Liversidge: Working Title II

On December 5 Bonniers Konsthall opens two parallel solo shows; I Always Tell the Truth by Dora García and Working Title II by Peter Liversidge. Despite their differences, the both artists consolidate through their candid approach and their will to create situations and events together with visitors and others.

Dora García’s artistic practice spans over various fields and the exhibition at Bonniers Konsthall highlights her interest in performance art, politics, and psychoanalysis. Through free association, the works are intertwined in the exhibition and thus open up for various possible readings.

What is truth and who speaks the truth? Through film, drawing, text and performance, Dora García explores the concept of truth. In contemporary information society, the boundary between true or false seems to erode more and more, especially in the political field where the presence of “alternative facts” makes it difficult to verify statements. The exhibition presents a series of works posing questions regarding truth, credibility and authority.

A new work, a monumental hand-written chalk drawing covers the glass facade of the konsthall, making the text I Always Tell the Truth, but Not All the Truth visible to anyone who passes by. The sentence is borrowed from the well-noticed TV interview with the French psychoanalyst Jaques Lacan, from 1974. The words carry ambiguity, and the insight that truth, in many ways, is constructed.

Several drawings are shown in the exhibition rooms, covering walls and floors. The drawings are part of an ongoing series by the artist, titled Mad Marginal Charts, yet also provide a platform for performances that are activated during the exhibition period. Together with actors, Dora García creates situations that investigate and question social and cultural codes and expectations. As part of the exhibition, the new film by García, Segunda Vez (Second Time Around, 2018), is shown, revolving around the Argentinian intellectual Oscar Masotta. Active as an happinista during two years (1966-67), Masotta created three happenings that related in uncanny ways to the brutal dictatorship that was about to come.

Curator Caroline Elgh Klingborg.

The artistic practice of Peter Liversidge unfolds from his Proposals. At the end of December 2017, the artist addressed 45 proposals to Bonniers Konsthall. The proposals challenge and invite, but the potential realization is left open-ended, akin to a score or a script. During the year, some of them were brought to life, often with the help from visitors or from employees at the konsthall. The collaborative aspect of the works questions the myth of the artist as a lone genius. In Working Title II Liversidge returns and the process continues.

The realization process also takes place at external sites. In Notes on Protesting, Liversidge works together with 110 students age 7-10 from Farsta, a suburb to Stockholm, around issues regarding freedom of speech and the right to make ones voice heard, a highly acute topic in a time when the free word is not only challenged, but also threatened in parts of the world. The work will be presented as a performance, a protest rally, at Bonniers Konsthall and in Farsta Centre.

Meanwhile social media hosts the work @FoundFacesProposal, in which Liversidge collaborates with the public to explore the psychological phenomenon of pareidolia—to see images and faces appear in inanimate objects. The phenomenon can be read as an attempt to create meaning in what appears to be meaningless.

In the exhibition, the artist revisits his interest in faces. With the simplest modifications Liversidge creates some kind of archetype effigies from found materials. Shape of masks and stone depictions are presented here as something akin to a museum collection. The found or slightly altered objects are, like his Proposals and Found Faces, something that potentially anyone could find or create—if one attempts to see the world from an alternative viewpoint.

Curator Magnus af Petersens, co-curator Yuvinka Medina.

Read more about the exhibitions, program highlights and upcoming publications at bonnierskonsthall.se