Matias Faldbakken
PORTRAIT PORTRAIT OF OF A A GENERATION GENERATION
15 December 2012–3 March 2013
Opening: Friday 14 December, 8pm
Press Preview: Friday 14 December, 6:30pm
WIELS
Contemporary Art Centre
Avenue Van Volxemlaan 354
1190 Brussels, Belgium
Hours: Wednesday–Sunday 11–18h
T +32 (0)2 340 00 53
This solo exhibition by Matias Faldbakken entitled PORTRAIT PORTRAIT OF OF A A GENERATION GENERATION reflects the artist’s ongoing interest in transforming the existing languages of form that emerge from particular periods in modernism. For this project, Faldbakken has sourced iconic sculptures created in Norway in the 20th century to carry out condoned acts of vandalism. Essentially, Faldbakken transforms modernist sculpture’s aspirations toward the aerodynamically abstract and the utopially minimal by converting iconic works of ‘art’ into vessels for intoxication. In doing so, the artist folds in the ideals of the expanding and progressive spatial paradigms indicative of modernism’s wave into the retracted and restrictive incubator-like conditions for autonomy today.
At every level of his practice as artist and writer, Faldbakken displaces and reconfigures cultural signifiers in order to create a field of agitated idleness. He imposes a turbulence on the original sequences of reading and interpretation, thus underscoring the eradication of cause and effect by heightening the symptoms of an alienated and self-obsessed society. In this particular project made possible with the generous cooperation of The Vigeland Museum and with the Haukeland Family in Oslo, Norway, Faldbakken prompts iconic sculptures and those viewing them to be slam-dunked out of mechanical patterned regimens and to seek a rehabilitation of meaning.
Matias Faldbakken (b.1973, Hobro, Denmark, lives and works in Oslo, Norway) has exhibited widely internationally. His recent solo exhibitions include The Power Station, Dallas, TX, USA; Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany; Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen, Belgium; Kunsthalle St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland and The National Museum of Art, Design and Architecture, Oslo. He participated in the Nordic Pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy in 2005. As an author, his publications include Search (2011), Unfun (2008), Snort Stories (2006), Cold Product (2006), Macht und Rebel (2002), The Cocka Hola Company (2001). Faldbakken received his education from the Academy of Fine Arts, Bergen, Norway and Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Exhibition curated by Marta Kuzma
Exhibition organized in collaboration with OCA, Office for Contemporary Art Norway
Press contact
Micha Pycke, micha.pycke [at] wiels.org
T +32 (0)2 340 00 51 / M +32 (0)486 680 070
