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January 31, 2014 – Review
Nina Beier’s “Office Nature Nobody Pattern”
Ana Teixeira Pinto
Remember Spellbound? In Alfred Hitchcock’s 1945 thriller, Gregory Peck stars as an amnesiac patient whose dreams were famously designed by Salvador Dali. Scissors, eyes, curtains, faceless men, decks of cards—a whole panoply of Surrealist tokens parade before the piercing intellect of Dr. Constance Petersen, played by Ingrid Bergman. Conflating Sigmund Freud and Sherlock Holmes—as Hollywood always does—she approaches the dream sequence as if it were a forensic theater whose clues, once properly deciphered, will identify the murderer. A contorted wheel stands for a gun barrel, while two parallel lines symbolize snow tracks, culminating in the big reveal: it was the hospital’s director, behind the chimney, with the revolver.
Nina Beier’s “Office Nature Nobody Pattern” at Croy Nielsen also plays with the unequivocal literalness of psychoanalytic symbols. In what one could call a portrayal of the “office unconscious,” the gallery’s off-white floor is covered in grey industrial carpet topped with large potted plants—which the artist, in collaboration with Simon Dybbroe Møller, repurposed from the auction of a bankrupt Danish bank’s assets. These stand under hanging lights, and PVC blinds cover the wide window. Aside from some vegetable crates, half-spilled, in the entrance, the room looks like an anonymous bank branch. Hung at …