FORCE
March 23–June 24, 2018
The performances and multi-media installations by Danish artist Christian Falsnaes (*1980 Copenhagen) currently captivate an international audience. The Kunstmuseen Krefeld will present the artist’s first, large-scale solo exhibition in a museum.
The title of the exhibition, FORCE, sets the tone for Christian Falsnaes’ interactive works that examine notions of force, power, energy, and violence. Falsnaes explores the existing power dynamics between artist and public. He interrogates and precipitates group dynamics, entangles participants in ritual acts, but also confronts the individual with his or her own emotions, reflexes, and instincts. His participatory performances are simultaneously thrilling and drastic, seductive and shocking. They address the identity of the artist as an authoritative figure as well as themes revolving around a male-dominated art world and society. The social agency inherent in each individual can therefore develop its dynamic, political power. Falsnaes shifts the relationship between reality and fiction, art and non-art. His interactive practice counteracts the transience of performance art by creating an aesthetic presence of installation-like stagings, filmic narratives, photographs, and collages. In doing so, he ultimately calls into question the autonomy of art itself.
The exhibition FORCE comprises a total of eight art works from the past five years: interactive installations, performances, video installations, photographs, and collages. In addition, Falsnaes has developed two new participatory spaces specifically for Kunstmuseen Krefeld. In FORCE, a pictorial and interactive installation, visitors are transformed into nameless marionettes by donning black costumes. The second work, Icon, was inspired by the collection of Kunstmuseen Krefeld. Icons of a male-dominated, post-war modernism—works by Lucio Fontana, Yves Klein, Palermo, or Franz Erhard Walther—are the starting point for this performance and film that rely on audience participation.
The solo exhibition FORCE by Christian Falsnaes extends the long tradition of participatory projects at Kunstmuseen Krefeld, which, starting in the 1960s, includes renowned artists, such as Joseph Beuys, Hans Haacke, Yves Klein, or Franz Erhard Walther.
The artist will perform Icon on-site on two occasions (during the opening March 22, 2018 at 7pm and April 5, 2018 at 7pm as part of KunstImPuls).
Funded by The Danish Arts Foundation
Press material can be found here.
Kunstmuseen Krefeld
Kaiser Wilhelm Museum
Joseph-Beuys-Platz 1
47798 Krefeld
