Tauba Auerbach
and
No Sense of Place
Bergen Kunsthall
Rasmus Meyers allé 5
5015 Bergen
Norway
Opening hours:
Tue–Sun 12 pm–5 pm
Fridays 12 pm–10 pm
+ 47 55 55 93 11
bergen [at] kunsthall.no
Tetrachromat
11 November–22 December 2011
Curated by Solveig Øvstebø
In Tauba Auerbach’s work traditional distinctions between image, dimension and content collapse. Surface, specifically the larger issues surrounding topology, has been a central concern in her recent paintings, drawings, photographs and artist books. Auerbach interweaves discordant positions such as disorder and order, readability and abstraction, permeability and solidity—phenomena that are usually viewed as incompatible—into unified surfaces and volumes.
The title of the exhibition plays on the notion of ‘tetrachromatic’ vision. People normally perceive the world around them trichromatically (in three colours). Humans have three types of receptor for the perception of colour with varying sensitivities: red, green and blue. A new theory exists that there may be a small percentage of people (only women) who have a fourth colour receptor, which makes them ‘tetrachromatic.’ In order to play on such ideas of a fourth component, which, if it could be proven, would radically change our view of the world, Auerbach employs two analogies in this exhibition—the spatial (the idea of a fourth dimension) and the spectral (a fourth colour spectrum).
Since 2009, Auerbach has created a body of work she calls “fold paintings”. Inasmuch as they obscure the boundaries between two- and three-dimensionality, these paintings can be understood as an analogy that raises the possibility of a concept of four dimensions. In these paintings she twists and folds the canvas, ironing or pressing it such that the folds are embedded in the material. Then the canvas is spread out and spray-painted while it still has its three-dimensional contour. The result—after the paint has dried and the canvas has been stretched—is an almost perfect registration of the previous three-dimensional form of the surface. The surface takes on a trompe l’oeil effect as a convincing reproduction of three-dimensional form on a surface, not unlike traditional mimetic painting—but in this case based on inventiveness rather than painterly virtuosity.
Tauba Auerbach (b. 1981) lives and works in New York. Her recent solo exhibitions include The W Axis at Standard (Oslo), Here and Now/And Nowhere at Deitch Projects, New York, Passengers at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco, and The Answer/Wasn’t Here at the Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco. Her work has been included in Greater New York, PS1 MoMA, New York; 2010 The Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Exhibition Exhibition, Castello De Rivoli and “Younger Than Jesus,” New Museum, New York.
The exhibition has been initiated by Bergen Kunsthall and is a collaboration with Malmö Konsthall and WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels.
BERGEN KUNSTHALL – 11 November–22 December 2011
MALMÖ KONSTHALL – 17 March–10 June 2012
WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels – 2013
Publication
In connection with the exhibition Bergen Kunsthall and Sternberg Press are publishing a new book that presents Auerbach’s ongoing series of Fold paintings for the first time in book form.
Folds
Tauba Auerbach
Texts by: Edwin Abbott Abbott, Emmanuelle Dauplay, Italo Calvino
Published by Sternberg Press and Bergen Kunsthall, 2011.
Platform:
Artist talk with Tauba Auerbach
Friday 11 November at 6.30 pm
Platform is Bergen Kunsthall’s own lecture series. The talks will be streamed live on kunsthall.no and made available in our media archive.
No Sense of Place
11 November–22 December
David Adamo, Einat Amir, Keren Cytter, Brendan Fernandes, Carole Douillard, Dora Garcia
Curated by Elisabeth Byre in collaboration with Christian Alandete
Opening:
Friday 11 November at 8 pm
An instruction piece by Brendan Fernandes will be performed at the opening.
No Sense of Place is an attempt to look closer at some performance practices in contemporary art production that address the issue of place, often through a variety of media, such as video, objects, dance, and text. The project title is inspired by Joshua Meyrowitz’ prophetic book from 1986 on how electronic media dissolve the historical relationship between social behaviour and physical place.
Performance programme 26 November with performances by David Adamo, Einat Amir, Keren Cytter, Carole Douillard and Doria Garcia
