Will Benedict: Corruption Feeds
Julia Wachtel
31 October–14 December 2014
Opening: 31 October, 8pm
Bergen Kunsthall
Rasmus Meyers allé 5
5015 Bergen
Norway
T +47 55 55 93 10
bergen [at] kunsthall.no
Bergen Kunsthall is pleased to announce two new exhibitions. The first major institutional show by American artist Will Benedict is presented alongside the second installment in our new NO.5 programme, a partial re-presentation of American artist Julia Wachtel’s landmark solo exhibition at MCA Chicago in 1991.
Will Benedict
Corruption Feeds
Corruption Feeds is Will Benedict’s largest and most ambitious exhibition to date. It demonstrates the full breadth of his practice as an artist, curator and, most recently, filmmaker. Dividing the galleries at Bergen Kunsthall into a solo exhibition and a curated group show, his own works are brought into dialogue with an eclectic selection of found visual material, as well as works by a number of artists invited by Benedict, including Wolfgang Breuer, Clegg & Guttmann, Howard Finster, Gaylen Gerber, Tom Humphrey, Inventory, Fredrik Kolstø, David Leonard, Michele Di Menna, Pentti Monkkonen, Puppies Puppies, Lin May Saeed, Lucie Stahl, Anders Svarstad, Sergei Tcherepnin, Paul Theriault and Karl Uchermann.
Across the various different aspects of the exhibition, Benedict addresses themes of global distribution, agriculture, marketing and trade. The group section of the exhibition includes a new video, commissioned by Bergen Kunsthall and made by Benedict in collaboration with the artist and journalist David Leonard. Shot in various locations in France, Norway, India and the USA, it explores the transnational politics of food distribution through reportage, interviews and analysis, with various protagonists featuring a talking dolphin, giant rats and human rain. Other works in this section of the show further develop these ideas, and go on to address the marketing and advertising languages of the last three decades, revealing the symbiotic, or perhaps cannibalistic, relationship between contemporary art and commercial design and advertising—a space which Benedict’s own work frequently inhabits and explores.
Will Benedict (b. 1978) lives and works in Paris.
Julia Wachtel
In our NO.5 space we are re-presenting part of Julia Wachtel’s landmark solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, spring/summer 1991. It is accompanied by the second issue in our new publication series for NO.5, feauturing a newly commissioned text by Bob Nickas.
Julia Wachtel’s paintings deploy a repertoire of images drawn from everyday popular culture, which she variously appropriates and transforms. Wachtel is often linked with the so-called “Pictures Generation” of the 1980s, in which the critical appropriation of the imagery and languages of popular culture was a common denominator. Her paintings from that period still make an unusually pointed, complex impact, with their analysis of the “society of the spectacle” as manifested in full flood in the mid-1980s. With this exhibition, Bergen Kunsthall brings together a seminal group of works from Wachtel’s 1991 solo show at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, where two central groups of works were presented: the series “Emotional Appeal” (1986) and the series “Landscapes,” which Wachtel began in 1991 and which continue to this day.
Julia Wachtel (b. 1956) lives and works in New York.
In NO.5 Bergen Kunsthall revisits selected artworks and exhibitions, previously presented elsewhere in the world. Initiated in response to the increasing acceleration of both the production and reception of art, NO.5 provides an opportunity to slow down, focus on, and look again at particular works, exhibitions or fragments of exhibitions. Bergen Kunsthall will commission a new critical text to accompany each of these re-presentations.
Plattform:
Will Benedict and David Leonard in conversation
Saturday 1 November, 1pm
Quinn Latimer, On Julia Wachtel
Tuesday 25 November
Plattform is Bergen Kunsthall’s series of lectures, presentations and debates. Most events are live streamed, and available to view online in our video archive.
Related events:
Nina Könnemann The Lights
Thursday 13 November
Live video mixing at Landmark, staged to accompany the exhibition Will Benedict, Corruption Feeds.
Sergei Tcherepnin and Will Benedict
Sunday 14 December
A major new performance by artist and composer Sergei Tcherepnin presented alongside Will Benedict, Corruption Feeds.
Publications:
Will Benedict
Corruption Feeds
A new book by Will Benedict, accompanying the exhibition, will be published by Bergen Kunsthall in December 2014.
NO.5—#2
Julia Wachtel
Each NO.5 exhibition is accompanied by a new publication available to download for free as a pdf, or available in a print version from our bookshop INK. Issue #2, Julia Wachtel includes a new text by Bob Nickas, and will be available to download on www.kunsthall.no from 31 October.
Download the first issue of our new publication series NO.5 as a pdf: Ciara Phillips: Just You here! Also available in our bookshop INK.
Also on view:
Knut Henrik Henriksen
Notes To Stones
Offsite: Bergen City Hall
12 September–9 November 2014
