Marte Eknaes
»Fountain«
31.10.2009 – 16.01.2010
Opening 30 October 2009, 7 p.m.
CIRCUS is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition of Norwegian born artist Marte Eknaes. The work of Marte Eknaes absorbs the structures and surfaces of the contemporary commercial and urban environment. Dissecting and condensing she translates fragments of these environments into new concentrated forms that become open to new content.
Aspects of public entertainment and paradoxica of commercial seduction and information policy in the public sphere – but also stretching into the domestic space – are subject to her latest works. Observing places that inherit a high density of market economy such as Potsdamer Platz and shopping centres in Norway, Eknaes’ approach lies in creating alternative solutions by altering or removing the original content that aims to direct us with a commercial and/or entertainment motivation. Often she leaves only frames or blank spaces.
“Against the overwhelming content that is apparent in these spaces, whether it is the background music and endless streaming of video at Potsdamer Platz or the displays in the many shops in a shopping centre, I want to emphasize the idea of high concentration. In a way I am taking a step back aiming for an underdevelopement in order to redevelop into a different direction. My work isn’t about inflation but rather about concentration – reinserting meaning into structures, opening them up for greater understanding.” (Marte Eknaes)
The largely formally expressed solutions lead to reduced and at the same time complex arrangements. Installed to heighten the effect of each one and their interrelations, the works develop an economy of gesture, rejecting the muteness of pure minimalism. The materials and references that determine the formal as well as critical language of Eknaes’ sculptures and drawings are mainly ‘found’ in the sense of ‘pre-fabricated’, involving contemporarily potent objects from the urban space such as flat screens, railings or shop racks but also décor paper, tape etc., creating formalist, autonomous sculpture.
“This question of autonomy which might seem too obvious to mention is nevertheless important to emphasize. What is most thrilling about Eknaes's work is its sudden tacks sideways to purely formal or classically rhetorical inquiries: questions of irony, tautology and ornament that offer up something near to what Barthes would call the neutral, or an analysis of the game in motion.” (Melissa Gronlund)
The title of the show, ‘Fountain’, is the spring point for the most recent body of Eknaes’ work. It also refers to the way she sees public entertainment features, with both fascination and criticality. Just like flat screens, information boards or shop windows, fountains are as much a phenomenom of display. But as opposed to other public sculptures, it is still all about the display of the material: the appearance of the water.
Marte Eknaes studied at the Environmental Department at Glasgow School of Arts and California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles.