Josh Kline: Antibodies

Astrup Fearnley Museet is proud to present the first major museum exhibition of the American artist Josh Kline in Scandinavia. Kline has attracted attention in recent years with his thought-provoking artistic practice, which focuses on the technological, economic and biological changes affecting human life in the 21st Century.

The exhibition Antibodies addresses the precariousness of life and work in a predatory neoliberal society where instability and crisis describes not only labour, but our very existence as a species. Kline’s installations, sculptures, and videos are works of critical science-fiction that speculate on the radical possibilities of the near-future—potential dystopian and utopian transformations of politics, economics, technology and biology in the coming years and decades. Kline’s fictional visions of the future are extrapolated from phenomena shaping today’s reality ranging from surveillance and police brutality, to social and economic inequality, and the value and future of human work in an era of increasing automation.

Kline is among the important young artistic voices that has emerged in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, addressing the human condition in a global, late-capitalist reality that is characterised by rapid technological development, socio-economic upheaval and a rapidly accelerating global climate catastrophe. His artistic practice is powerful, prescient and poses vital questions about a world on the brink of both possible ruin and rebirth.

Curator: Therese Möllenhoff

About the artist: Josh Kline (b. 1979, Philadelphia, USA) is an American artist who lives and works in New York. His art has been exhibited internationally, including in solo exhibitions at Modern Art Oxford, Oxford, UK; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy; Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon; Modern Art, London; and 47 Canal, New York. In 2019, his work was included in the 2019 Whitney Biennial; New Order: Art and Technology in the Twenty-First Century at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and The Body Electric at Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Kline’s work is in the permanent collections of Astrup Fearnley Museet; Julia Stoschek Collection, Dusseldorf; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; and the Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum, The Guggenheim in America, among others.

Exhibition catalogue: The exhibition is followed by a richly illustrated catalogue. It contains an introduction by director Solveig Øvstebø and articles by curator Therese Möllenhoff, writer and art critic Domenick Ammirati and Lumi Tan, curator at The Kitchen in New York.