Sculpture and dance, metamorphosis and memento mori – new season in the Sculpture Park
May 18–November 2, 2014
Opening: May 18
Wanås Konst/The Wanas Foundation
Wanås, SE-289 90 Knislinge
Sweden
Dance Me with Molly Haslund, Christian Jankowski, Tadashi Kawamata, Sigalit Landau, Skånes Dansteater, Rachel Tess, Salla Tykkä
Skipping ropes and platforms in the tree tops, performances in the Park—inside and outside Dance Me presents artists that explore movement, make connections between life and art, and affect both body and mind. The works create awareness of our body. What directs our movements and activities? How is everyday life choreographed? In Dance Me sculpture, dance and choreography meet and merge with works that are solid and ephemeral, intimate and playful.
Tadashi Kawamata has built platforms high up in the trees overlooking the grounds, while Molly Haslund transforms familiar swings and drawing compasses into sculptures for coordinated participation. Elements of play and exercise, rhythm and repetition reappear in the film works of Christian Jankowski, Sigalit Landau and Salla Tykkä. The movement shifts from the external to internal—engaging with our innermost selves and activates feelings of pain, joy and collaboration. Dancer and choreographer Rachel Tess investigates the empathic response to bodies in motion in a confined space. In Souvenir, a mobile choreographic architecture, she invites the audience to both sense and experience the performance from an unusually close vantage point. Skånes Dansteater contributes with performances and actions in the Park that mark the start of a longer collaboration.
In a series of exhibitions and site-specific works Wanås Konst has explored sculpture and the relation between the artwork and the viewer. Dance Me goes beyond disciplines with choreographic architecture, coordination models and performances.
Revisit 2014: Unvergessen (Graf Spee III) Jan Håfström (Sweden), Juan Pedro Fabra Guemberena (Sweden/Uruguay), Carl Michael von Hausswolff, (Sweden). In 2007 the artist trio created the installation Graf Spee, now on permanent view at Wanås Konst. As a point of departure, they used the story of the German pocket battle ship Admiral Graf Spee, which was scuttled in 1939 outside Uruguay. For the exhibition the artists travelled to Montevideo to follow the story to the bottom of the sea, to face history, themselves and each other.
A few years ago Juan Pedro told me about his grandfather Francisco Guemberena witnessing the event. What deeply affected the anti-fascist Francisco Guemberena was the youth of the sailors. The young dead were not enemies but victims of a brutal political system. (Jan Håfström)
Revisit is a series of exhibitions in the Art Gallery in which artists look back on and develop their works in the permanent collection.
Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd (Sweden): Interlettre (1984–85)
Poet, writer and artist Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd has since the 1960s worked with the relationship between images and words. In “The Unseen Alphabet” (1983), Susan Sontag wrote about Interlettre, and the spaces in-between the letters of the alphabet and the numbers—those unseen spaces that normally go unnoticed when we read a text. The CFR Art Foundation generously donated the twelve sculptures of the unseen alphabet now installed in the Park.
Wanås Konst Children’s Book 2014: Hur man blir en sten Martina Lowden (Sweden) and Klara Kristalova (Czech Republic)
Martina Lowden has written a tale about metamorphosis—about becoming a stone. The nature around Wanås comes alive in artist Klara Kristalova’s images—some of which will escape the pages of the book and appear as sculptures throughout the Park. Each year, new authors and artists collaborate on a children’s book experiment.
Upcoming: FOR GOOD AND FOR BAD Helene Billgren, Grafikens Hus c/o Wanås Konst,
June 14–November 2
Press contact: Sofia Bertilsson, T +46 (0) 733 86 68 20 / press [at] wanaskonst.se
