Photo: AK DolvenNew exhibition by Norwegian artist A K Dolven to China
09/06/2010 //
The exhibition entitled Looking for Balance will have its official opening on the 5th of June and will be open from the 6th of June to the 11th of July. This exhibition is part of a continuing dialogue established at the Chinese art gallery Platform China concerning the role of the moving image in contemporary art.
A K Dolven’s practice includes film, video, photography, painting as well as site specific works. However, this exhibition, presented for the first time in China, concerns itself specifically with works made for moving images. Dolven shows four works executed over a period of eight years that represent separate but interrelated and fundamental aspects of her practice in film and video. The four works are entitled Between the morning and the handbag (2002), Amazon (2005), Ahead (2008) and Self portrait – Berlin february 1989 – Lofoten august 2009.
These works convey a concern with the body as the vessel within which human sensibility and emotions are contained and alternatively as substance in a world of form and matter. They also show the existential condition of the individual considered from an essentially humanist position, and the potential these philosophical positions have to be realised within an aesthetic canon. Each either directly or implicitly makes reference to place and more particularly to landscape.
These works are rooted in Dolven’s sensibility formed in the northern reaches of Europe, in the landscape that surrounds the Lofoten Islands. Here in the winter the mountains that run down to the sea are covered in deep snow, in the summer the sun never sets. This extreme environment is used as a backdrop by Dolven, a reality that contrasts favourably in its purity and simplicity to an urban setting, creating a generous stage for her reflections. Its harsh and simple scenography has become a place where Dolven´s ideas can gestate as she reduces the human experience to fundamental conditions and broadens enduring conventions of visual art.
Curate by: David Thorp
Exhibition Venue: Platform China Contemporary Art Institute
Exhibition Dates: June 6th – July 11th 2010
Exhibition Opening: June 5th 2010
Project supported by OCA- Office for Contemporary Art Norway, Innovation Norway and the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Beijing.
For more information see:
A K Dolven: http://www.akdolven.com
Platform China: http://www.platformchina.org