Abstract Possible: The Stockholm Synergies Tensta konsthall 12.1—22.4.2012

Doug Ashford Dorit Margreiter Claire Barclay Åsa Norberg/Jennie Sundén José León Cerrillo Mai-Thu Perret Yto Barrada Falke Pisano Matias Faldbakken Walid Raad Priscila Fernandes Emily Roysdon Zachary Formwalt Tommy Støckel Liam Gillick/Anton Vidokle Mika Tajima Goldin+Senneby Haegue Yang Wade Guyton Iman Issa Gunilla Klingberg Wikipedia

Tensta Konsthall

translate Konica Minolta 1 Abstraction is a visual strategy used in Bukowskis) and withdrawal strategies many cultures at different times in history. (in a seminar room at the Center for In the Muslim world there is a particularly Fashion Studies, Stockholm University). prominent tradition of abstraction. As Formal abstraction encompasses painting, an aesthetic category, abstraction was sculpture, installations and video that first used by the classic avant-garde in the reflect abstract languages, especially West in the early twentieth century. In this geometric abstraction, which often recalls capacity it is intimately connected with the classic avant-garde’s development social and political utopias, both material of a novel visual expression. But also and transcendental. Since then, one of performative takes on abstraction. the key characteristics of abstraction has Economic abstraction concerns art been its capacity for self-reflection as an and economy, taking up the genuine artistic and intellectual technique, with abstract value of money. Locating one part multiple expressions beyond the visual of Abstract Possible: The Stockholm arts. Abstract Possible: The Stockholm Synergies at Bukowskis makes it possible Synergies suggests that we pay attention to imply as well as concretely point to and reconsider certain crucial aspects out economic connections and discuss of the phenomena of abstraction as changes in the structures of art funding, manifested in contemporary art. Abstract specifically transformations concerning Possible: The Stockholm Synergies the commercial art markets such as follows, examines and complicates three auction houses—the secondary market— prominent tendencies: formal abstraction, moving into the primary market— economic abstraction and “withdrawal- traditionally the sphere of galleries. The strategies” (Latin abstrahere, to art works at Bukowskis will be for sale for withdraw). set prices and thanks to the generosity of Each “strand” is loosely connected the participating artists Tensta konsthall with one of the three locations which will be paid a fee for the exhibition. The form part of the project in Stockholm: fee is funding the report Contemporary formal abstraction (Tensta konsthall), Art and its Commercial Markets: A economic abstraction (the auction house Report on Current Conditions and

Future Scenarios, which will be released are planned at Eastside Projects in at the end of January. A symposium Birmingham and Künstlerhaus Stuttgart. will mark the release of the report www.abstractpossible.org and a subsequent debate will bring up Over the last fifteen years, a plethora of the specific conditions of funding for examples of formal abstraction, both contemporary art in Sweden. geometric and expressive, have been visible “Withdrawal” refers to the wave of in exhibitions, site-specific installations, artists’ initiatives and strategies during the publications, and other projects. This last fifteen years that have deliberately not work often seems to buy into the idea joined what we can call the “mainstream” of unproblematic aesthetic enjoyment, in order to create a greater degree of ultra-subjectivity and certain visual codes self-determination for the artists. The which are taken at face value, as style university in general and the seminar rather than structure and ideology. But room specifically can, as the artist and in addition to the many cases in which writer Catherine M. Lord argues in a text geometric abstraction in art and design on a poster by Emily Roysdon, be seen as today becomes a lifestyle indicator, artists examples of “spaces apart” which allow contemplate and engage with the legacy for other kinds of interactions than those of modernist abstraction, also formally, characterizing the rest of society. At the as the result of highly specific artistic Center for Fashion Studies, two artworks and ideological trajectories. One of the will “cohabit” with students, staff and questions raised by Abstract Possible faculty in their day-to-day working is exactly what it means to revisit these environment for two years. trajectories from today’s point of view. Abstract Possible is a research project And yet, as these works show, that aims to explore notions of abstraction, abstraction is more than a formal taking contemporary art as its starting construction. The concept of abstraction point. Since 2010 the project has developed has—within a Marxist framework—also in three locations: Malmö konsthall, been applied to all relations within a Museo Tamayo in Mexico City and the capitalist system. As of late, this has been White Space in Zurich. Further iterations extended to the logic and distortion of

2 Abstract Possible: The Stockholm Synergies scale engendered by the post-Fordist/late and entering the art terrain “at an capitalist economy. Working conditions, angle”, often with the aim of creating and conditions of production, are other more space for maneouvering through pertinent points of reference here. The self-organised initiatives. Artists seem abstract nature of modern finance has to need a space apart today, through been addressed by theoretician Sven “withdrawn” initiatives in the field of Lütticken, whose text Living with cultural production. These developments Abstraction moves between abstract art have been discussed in terms of “strategic and an increasingly abstracted world. He essentialism” as well as “strategic discusses how abstraction is implemented separatism”. Sometimes it seems to be a universally through capitalism, drawing reaction to pressures of spectacularization connections, for example, between the and access, at other times it seems to draw abstraction of social and economic on specific art historical developments. conditions and those mechanisms that Perhaps we can begin to think of these turn abstract concepts into code. All abstract and opaque strategies and this is happening within a culture and an tactics as an indication of a different economy in which we literally “live under “post-postmodern” critical paradigm abstraction”, although the economic challenging the enlightenment trust recession has more recently called such in transparency? Or is it yet another abstraction into relief. In which case phenomenon obscuring our view of the we have to acknowledge abstraction world? as omnipresent, not unlike the ideal of transparency in liberal democracies. What then is the potential of abstraction in such a contested territory? The use of strategies of withdrawal among artists and other cultural producers is an easily observable phenomenon in today’s art world. This kind of abstraction is a conscious method of obscuring

Parts of the exhibition will also run The Center for Fashion Studies, concurrently at Bukowskis auction house Stockholm University (27.1—12.2): (12.1.2012—12.2013):

Doug Ashford Mai-Thu Perret Claire Barclay Emily Roysdon José León Cerrillo Matias Faldbakken For opening hours and further Priscila Fernandes information visit Zachary Formwalt www.tenstakonsthall.se Liam Gillick Goldin+Senneby Wade Guyton Iman Issa Gunilla Klingberg Dorit Margreiter Åsa Norberg/Jennie Sundén Mai-Thu Perret Falke Pisano Emily Roysdon Tommy Støckel Mika Tajima

translate 3 Contemporary Art and its Commercial Noah Horowitz, Suhail Malik/Andrea Markets: A Report on Current Phillips, Alain Quemin and Olav Velthuis. Conditions and Future Scenarios is Design by Metahaven. published by Sternberg Press and Tensta konsthall as part of Abstract Possible: The Stockholm Synergies. This report maps and analyses the complex and contested entanglements of contemporary art and its commercial markets. Contemporary art as an asset category and celebrity accessory, the rise of the art fair, and the increased competition of auction houses are among the phenomena which are discussed by academics, theoreticians and artists. While some of the contributions show how the market’s globalization, and commercialization both reflect and propel the way art is produced, presented, and perceived, others downplay the impact of these developments and argue that the market’s structure has essentially remained the same. All the texts trigger the question: What will art look like in 2022 and how will artists operate? A symposium on the occasion of the report’s release will take place on 28.1. Edited by Olav Velthuis and Maria Lind. Contributions by Stefano Baia- Curioni, Karen van den Berg/Ursula Pasero, Isabelle Graw, Goldin+Senneby,

What Lies in the Future for increased eight times between 1998-2008. Contemporary Art? Debate on art In this situation, what will happen with funding in Sweden—today and ten contemporary art? What kind of art and years hence will take place at Tensta which artists will be privileged and which konsthall on 23.2. During recent will be disregarded? Representatives from decades, both the public and the private public and private agents in Sweden have infrastructures of art have undergone been invited to present their prospects and changes that have affected how art is the risks involved. What will the situation produced, presented and perceived. for art and artists be in ten years time? The Internationally, studios connected debate is undertaken in cooperation with to individual artists, which resemble Konsthall C. companies with more than hundred employees, have become increasingly common. Artists are expected to be entrepreneurs within the “creative industries” as well as researchers within a growing “practice-based” area of research. Public art institutions are required to come up with their own revenues and high public attendance figures, and art is more and more considered to be entertainment. In many places, for example, in municipalities, we see how public financial support has decreased on the one hand, and on the other, become more controlled than only a decade ago. Art has been commercialized: at present it is an object for investment and speculation, which is underlined by the fact that sales of art at auctions have

4 Abstract Possible: The Stockholm Synergies Artist presentations as part of Abstract Possible: The Stockholm Synergies Events as part of Abstract Possible: The Stockholm Synergies 19.1 Doug Ashford 14.1 The Wittgenstein Suite, a musical 9.2 performance by José León Cerrillo and Wade Guyton Sara Lundén presenting twelve pop songs in honour of Wittgenstein. 15.3 Mai-Thu Perret 28.1 Contemporary Art and its Commercial 24.3 Markets: A Report on Current Walid Raad Conditions and Future Scenarios, a symposium on the occasion of the report 12.4 with the same title, with contributions by Sven Lütticken (critic and theoretician) Stefano Baia-Curioni, Noah Horowitz, Andrea Phillips, Mika Tajima, Olav In collaboration with the Royal University Velthuis and Thea Westreich. Moderator College of Fine Arts. Tone Hansen.

Guided tours of the exhibition Saturday 29.1 and Sunday at 14. A Guiding Light, a film by Liam Gillick/ Anton Vidokle shown at the cinema Zita.

23.2 What Lies in the Future for Contemporary Art? A debate on the forms of financing for art in Sweden—today and 10 years hence. In collaboration with Konsthall C. How do artists today use abstraction? 26.2 In collaboration with ABF (the Workers’ A Guiding Light, a film by Liam Gillick/ Educational Association). In Swedish. Anton Vidokle shown at the cinema Zita. 25.1 17.3 Abstraction and the Classical Avant Strategies of Withdrawal, an afternoon Garde, Maria Lind taking Georges Perec’s book and film Un homme qui dort as a starting point. 21.2 Lectures, film screenings, presentations Signs. Abstraction in Muslim art and and readings by Ida Börjel, Cecilia architecture, Jan Hjärpe Grönberg, Jonas (J) Magnusson and Jesper Olsson, organized by OEI. 21.3 Latin American Challenges, Maria Lind 14.4 The Complex Object (Affecting 18.4 Abstraction 3), performance by and with Formal and Economic Abstraction in Falke Pisano. Contemporary Art, Maria Lind

Abstract Art Now and Then, Here and There With support by the Austrian Embassy, Stockholm; Danish Arts Council; FastPartner; Mondriaan Four lectures on the topic of abstract art. Foundation; Malmö konsthall; Office for Contemporary How did abstraction within art emerge Art Norway. in the western world at the turn of the In collaboration with the Center for Fashion Studies, Stockholm University; Ross Tensta Gymnasium; The century? School of Architecture; Tensta Bibliotek; Zita Folkets How has abstract art functioned and Bio. been understood in other parts of the Special thanks to Iaspis. world, for example in Latin America? What has been the role of abstraction in Muslim cultures? translate 5 Works beyond the exhibition space evolved out of diagrams mapping people in the New York art world involved with Gunilla Klingberg: Brand New View political and social activism. Collective —Tensta, cut-out foil on the two front social imaginaries and endeavours windows of Tensta Centrum. are documented and translated by an individual whose subjectivity spans from Tommy Støckel: the result of a workshop the sharing of groups—Doug Ashford was conducted with pupils from Ross Tensta a core member of legendary art collective Gymnasium and students from The Group Material (1979-1996)—to solitary School of Architecture’s preparatory reflection. Like Gilles Deleuze’s “abstract course at the gymnasium is shown in the machines”, the resulting delicate diagrams atrium of the school. show relations between forces, charting powers—pictorial and others. Doug Ashford (New York) Claire Barclay (Glasgow) Six Moments in 1967 # 1-6, tempera and collage on board, 2011 Untitled, powder coated steel, machined With layer painted upon layer using the aluminium, leather, 2011 ancient medium of tempera, these intimate paintings come about slowly in the relative Untitled, powder coated steel, silk chiffon, isolation of the studio space. The surfaces machined aluminium, screen printed are even and rarely do they betray strokes aluminium foil, 2012 of the brush. The colours are subdued and, The functional and dysfunctional together with a method that is reminiscent nature of objects often acts as triggers of icon painting, they create a somewhat for Claire Barclay’s own objects and meditative air around them. By contrast, installations, which draw on sophisticated the newspaper clippings report on the and primal understandings of the civil rights movement’s street protests world we inhabit. Intense attention to in the US. These geometrical but not specific materials, their qualities necessarily rectilinear paintings originally and connotations and not least their unexpected combinations, play into the on buses which need to communicate fabrication which takes place both in the their routes to illiterates who migrate studio and in the exhibition space before for work and other reasons. This new the moment of display. This gives the visual language consists of basic and work a sense of being in the middle of an easily recognisable forms painted large ongoing process that involves intention as on the sides of buses, creating a kind of well as improvisation. Elements of slick “everyday-abstraction” born of necessity. manufacturing are combined with the Working with the tension between allegory handmade and improvised, creating a and snapshot, Barrada is engaging with hybrid that tends to be at once abstracted geography as a zone of imagination and and concrete. Like many of Barclay’s desire. The Strait of Gibraltar often works, the two sculptures contain a wide appears in her documentary photographs range of materials shaped to appear and films as a zone where migrants want to like found objects but which in fact are move north and expatriates long for home. all constructed. These sculptures hover Once described as images which document between the familiar and the foreign, “bare life”, albeit negatively, through allowing a wide range of possible and blurs and lacunas, her photographs imagined interpretations, interactions and evoke a situation in which even political scenarios. representation is a blank spot.

Yto Barrada (Paris/Tangier) José León Cerrillo (Mexico City)

Autocar—Tangier, Fig 1-4, photography, Hotel Edén Revisited, silkscreen on 2004 Plexiglass, mirror, metal, paper, light, 2011 The four photographs by Yto Barrada Hotel Edén Revisited re- show colourful but imperfect abstract contextualises the visual vocabulary shapes on shiny surfaces. In three of the that the artist has developed in several photographs the shape is “broken” by exhibitions involving recurring elements black lines cutting through them. The such as screens, paper curtains, two-way breaks come from doors and shutters mirrors, and a reduced geometry (circles,

6 Abstract Possible: The Stockholm Synergies squares, triangles). Together they form Matias Faldbakken (Oslo) a distilled visual grammar or hint at a possible system of meaning. Shadows Triple Cover Screen Print #2 - 11, and the inclusion of people are other silkscreen print on paper, 2011 features in the work. Like Pierre Guyotat’s In this series of silk screens the novel Eden Eden Eden (1970), which is image is overprinted several times, written in “one breath” without a period, making the starting point blur. Such this work is based on overlayering and intensive layering is a recurring method simultaneity, making it impossible to in Matias Faldbakken’s work, which isolate one panel from the other. The draws heavily on direct attitudes and effect is one of withdrawal from normal various subcultures, in this case the behaviour and surrender to an entirely commercially extremely successful different existence set apart from the computer and console game Battlefield. world. But to observe something can The “sloppy” installation, with its brown change that which is being observed, just sticky tape, enacts some of this attitude. as how we linguistically describe colour Acts of destruction are transformed into can affect how we experience colour, as aesthetic forms in which abstraction the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein plays an important role. His first solo argued. Twelve pop songs in honour museum exhibition (2009) was even of Wittgenstein make up the core of entitled Shocked into Abstraction José León Cerrillo’s and fellow artist and there his interest in how social Sara Lundén’s collaborative musical and political aggression can appear as performance The Wittgenstein Suite. powerful gestures in art was explored in Functioning as an extension of Cerrillo’s installations, sculptures, wall-painting and installation, music as an abstract art form video. Faldbakken is a prolific writer; his is evoked. For this occasion they have first novel The Cocka Hola Company produced six new songs, thus closing the (2001) was published under the pseudonym project with twelve songs, a whole album. Abo Rasul. Here he used literature to Performance 14.1. delve into similar topics, not least negation as a method, but with entirely different conditions of production, dissemination Calibration Circle will also be shown at and reception. Bukowskis.

Priscila Fernandes (Porto/Amsterdam) Zachary Formwalt (Albany, Georgia/ Amsterdam) Calibration Circle, HD video, 16:9, colour, silent, 2’06’’ on loop, 2011 At Face Value, single-channel HD video Dancer: Caroline van der Ouden with sound, 22 mins, 2008 Onesinglerule in Calibration Circle Zachary Formwalt’s work deals with dictates the choreography: the red the operations of capitalism through circle, held by the white-clad ballerina, various instances of material culture. must remain at the centre of the frame In the video essay At Face Value the regardless of where the pirouettes take her. strategy of overprinting stamps in times Against a black background, the locked of rapid changes in economic value is circle and ballerina seem to hover in space, the focal point. Having learned about like a red and white abstract shape, thus in economic value through stamp collecting multiple ways enacting dance, understood as a boy—they are considered a safe as a quintessential abstract art form. investment as you can always exchange Through this peculiar performance, a them for the value on them—the artist system is made visible: here the repetition admits that this view does not take creates a mesmerizing space for passive inflation into account. Mixing old footage observation and absorption, which then like excerpts from Sergei Eisenstein’s film turns into endless recurrence. Interested Strike (1925) with his own shots from in varying states of activity and passivity stamp collector gatherings and close-ups that the contemporary individual inhabits of stamps, Formwalt concentrates on within the ideology of our casting society, stamp overprinting in Germany during Priscila Fernandes’ recent works struggle the hyperinflation in the early 20s and with the pressure put on individuals to be in the US in 1928. On each stamp two in a constant state of performance, and histories converge—the history of the the expectation put upon them to perform. stamp itself and that of the postmark translate 7 stamp, visualizing the cost of making soap, borrowing its title from the longest connections. Through these juxtapositions running soap opera on US television. a whole system of value is exposed. Goldin+Senneby (Stockholm) Liam Gillick (London/NewYork)/ Anton Vidokle (Moscow/New York) Policy poem, Goldin+Senneby with Mara Lee (author and poet), 2011, a A Guiding Light, video, 2010 framework for Abstract Possible: The At the Cinema Zita, 29.1 and 26.2. Stockholm Synergies at Bukowskis, In the film A Guiding Light, by Liam where among other things, the staff there Gillick and Anton Vidokle, a manifesto is in charge of installing and mediating the written by Gao Shiming, the Executive work, when a work is sold it is taken away, Curator of the latest Shanghai Biennial, etc. served as the starting point. This manifesto is an attack on the art system Abstract Possible: An Investment and what Shiming thinks of as its limiting Portrait, Goldin+Senneby with Thea monoculture. He proposes that in order Westreich Art Advisory Services, 2011, to escape the long claws of the system, it a detailed evaluation of the collecting is necessary to step aside. To withdraw opportunities presented by each of becomes for him an escape route from the works on offer in the exhibition at unbearable limitations. Gillick/Vidokle Bukowskis. Presented as a unique and have responded to the manifesto by strictly confidential report, its contents are inviting a handful of emerging artists, only made available to the buyer. curators and critics to interpret and Goldin+Senneby’s practice is perhaps extrapolate from the text in front of three best understood through their multi- cameras in a TV studio where the making formal and Bataille-inspired project of the film is revealed. Former Artforum Headless, which started in 2007, in which editor and poet, Tim Griffin has lent his late capitalist phenomena such as off-shore voice for the voiceover. The 22-minute long finance and its enactment of virtual space film hovers between cultural criticism and within a real economy are explored. By using outsourcing and other post-Fordist concretely becomes part of that which it ways of organising work, for example wants to discuss. hiring a ghostwriter who conducts research on and writes about an off-shore Wade Guyton (New York) company in the Bahamas called Headless Ltd, the artists enact significant aspects Untitled, plywood and paint (the floor), of today’s society. Goldin+Senneby’s 2010 contribution to Abstract Possible: The The very means of artistic production, Stockholm Synergies is twofold. It particularly painting, are the focus includes the framework for one of the of many of Wade Guyton’s works. exhibition’s three parts, at the auction Standardized procedures such as printing house Bukowskis where the works will be with basic commercial printers have for sale. Goldein+Senneby have invited been appropriated in order to generate in the poet Mara Lee, who has provided paintings where the mechanical meets a confidential policy poem to be followed the incidental with wrinkles, blurbs and by the staff at Bukowskis. The staff is also other “errors”, not unlike in any office in charge of displaying and mediating the environment. The resulting paintings work and to remove each art work at the are minimal and abstract, as in “non- moment of sale. representational”. At the same time, they For the sale itself, Goldin+Senneby evoke the emergence of mass media, have produced a new work together and therefore popular culture, in print with legendary art advisor Thea workshops. The work Untitled is a remake Westreich. Approaching the opaque of the floor in Guyton’s former studio. and asymmetrical information flows Cheap plywood was painted glossy black, of the art market, they are offering a thereby creating a large sculpture, or confidential “investment portrait” of the pedestal, as the very support of all work exhibition itself. As articulated through taking place in the studio. At the same Goldin+Senneby’s work, “implication” is time, the floor becomes an enormous a significant trope in Abstract Possible: monochrome painting, partaking in a The Stockholm Synergies because it somewhat daunting tradition. The first

8 Abstract Possible: The Stockholm Synergies three times the floor was shown it was their symbolic languages and abstracting combined with the printed “paintings” tendencies. Nevertheless, she suggests that had made indexical marks on the alternatives to the existing monuments surfaces of the floor wherever they and memorials, which remain in the realm landed immediately after their printing. of the powers that be. In Material for a In Abstract Possible the floor has been sculpture proposed as an alternative released from this context, taking on a to a monument that has become an different existence. The artist has asked embarrassment to its people, two for the floor not to be cleaned during the spherical white lamps sitting on top of a exhibition period. tall and slender table take turns lighting. The title is an integral part of the work, Iman Issa (Cairo/New York) placed on the wall next to the table.

Material for a sculpture proposed as Gunilla Klingberg (Stockholm) an alternative to a monument that has become an embarrassment to its people, Brand New View—Tensta, cut-out foil on wooden table, lights, automatic dimmer, the two front windows of Tensta Centrum, circuit, vinyl text on wall, 2010 2012 How can you speak to a collective? Brand New View is a series of Is there a value to the seemingly failed installations with cut-out foil on windows. languages of monuments and memorials? Employing mandala-like abstract patterns In a series of ten “displays” Iman Issa based on logos from cheap brands more searches for adequate ways to deal with likely to appear on the sink at home, significant figures, events and places rather than more prestigious brands from (rather than virtues and value systems). luxury goods, Gunilla Klingberg evokes Referring to existing monuments and Eastern and New Age types of abstraction. memorials which she knows well from However, “the spiritual in art” here has her hometown of Cairo and other places more to do with consumption than with in Egypt, and which for a long time no ideas such as Vassily Kandinsky’s about one looked at, she has a renewed belief in transcendence through art. For Abstract

Possible: The Stockholm Synergies sculptures and the mobiles. The latter she has made a new version of Brand consist of letters cut from sheet aluminium New View, this time relying on logos referring to standardized type in old- found in Tensta Centrum, for example, style hot metal printing. The typeface is the grocery store Matvärlden and the reminiscent of those designed by Josef kebab restaurant Tasty Fried Chicken. In Albers and Herbert Bayer in the1920s, Klingberg’s installation we are surrounded based on a restricted repertoire of simple by seductively beautiful and commercially- geometric shapes, at a time when signage driven manifestations of abstraction with in general became more important. In the potential to quite literally make us lose Zentrum (lynne) the digital meets the orientation. Supported by FastPartner. analogue, words mix with images and information becomes abstract. Dorit Margereiter (Vienna) Åsa Norberg/Jennie Sundén (Gothenburg) Zentrum (lynne), mobile, metal construction, paint, 2011 As We Go Along, three MDF boards Zentrum (lynne) is part of a series with paper, cardboard and textile, 2012 of “proto-cinematic” mobiles which As We Go Along is an on-going simultaneously function as portraits project inspired by the lectures held of female curators and elaborations on by Josef Albers at the Bauhaus in how architecture shapes socio-cultural the1920s and at Black Mountain College contexts. Based on the typeface used in the 1930-40s. Albers, one of the for a monumental neon sign which for most influential abstract artists in the more than four decades sat on top of the 20th century and a legendary teacher, Brühlzentrum building (1963) in Leipzig, often used inexpensive material in his it is now documenting something lost. workshops, encouraging the students to This complex, containing public housing, get the most out of the material at hand so a theatre, a restaurant and a kindergarten, as to learn how to see and interact with the has since been demolished and Margreiter material. The students weren’t supposed has recalled its legacy in a film, posters, to think of what they did as art or as a translate 9 means of self-expression but as a way of artists such as Alexander Rodchenko, “gathering experience”. Albers used the Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Francis Picabia word “magic” in relation to the moment of and—more than anyone else—Varvara transformation of the material, a moment Stepanova. Their versions of abstraction that he called ”Schwindel” (vertigo). He developed as a reaction to the materialism often drew parallels between form and and naturalism of previous generations society, talking about “democratic design”, and expressed a desire to create a new where all elements—lines, shapes and language suiting a new society. Stepanova, colours—were supposed to integrate and a pioneer of textile, fashion and set “get along”. The materials used in As We design, as well as polygraphy, was not Go Along, which consists of three low only engaged with but also embedded in platforms referring to presentations at art concrete industrial production. One of schools with simple shapes made of cheap her textile designs provides the basis for material on top, are “around materials”: Perret’s wallpaper, which can be ordered plugs for mounting, sandpaper for online. Conditions of production are also polishing/shaping, corrugated cardboard central to the work of Perret, who since for protecting an object, etc. The materials 1999, has worked on a fictive “master relate to carpentry, transformation and narrative” entitled The Crystal Frontier reconstruction. that deals with a group of young women who withdraw from urban life to form a Mai-Thu Perret (Geneva) self-sustained commune in the American Southwest. The Crystal Frontier is Untitled, block printed wallpaper, manifested as a longer text, with excerpts dimensions variable, 2008 printed on posters, sculptures, garments Early 20th century avant-garde and installations. The wallpaper is on view practices and their employment of at Tensta konsthall and at the Center for abstraction offer a distinct backdrop for Fashion Studies, Stockholm University. the work of Mai-Thu Perret. In paintings, sculptures, installations, textile banners, wallpaper, etc. she refers to works by

Falke Pisano (Amsterdam/Berlin) object as performative site” is one of Pisano’s major concerns: how can a static Figures of Speech; Figure 1 (Context, thing be the locus of action? How can an Past, Present, Future), sculpture: artwork be a speech act? Can a sculpture wood, paint, fabric, metal, 2009; Figure be turned into a conversation? “Context”, 2 (Collaboration & Subjectivity), “collaboration”, “subjectivity” and sculpture: wood, paint, fabric, metal, “agency”, typically thought of as keywords 2009; Figure 3 (Conditions of Agency), within social practice-type work, are sculpture: wood, paint, fabric, metal, part of Pisano’s flux, which is embedded 2009; Figure 4 (Production of Speech), in abstraction. The performance The sculpture: wood, paint, fabric, metal, 2009 Complex Object (Affecting Abstraction Figures of Speech has developed 3) will take place in the exhibition on 14.4. in stages over five years, involving texts written by the artist, performances based Walid Raad (Beirut/New York) on the texts, images and objects based on the texts, and then performances Scratching on Things I Could and texts referring back to the images Disavow: A History of Modern and objects. New contexts and ideas and Contemporary Arab Art: Part create feedback loops where each new I_Chapter 1_Section 271: Appendix round does something different. Falke XVIII: Plates 24-151, 23 archival inkjet Pisano presents the objects on view prints on archival paper, framed, 2008 here (with the titles Figure 1—4) as In the by now legendary works which symbolic formal syntheses of four lines form part of the Atlas Group Archive in her practice, namely “objecthood and (1989-2004) Walid Raad explored the time”, “collaboration and subjectivity”, history of the recent Lebanese civil wars. “agency” and “speech”. They have a touch Using facts as a starting point – historical, of the handmade, vaguely reminiscent sociological, economic, emotional and of abstract works by the classical avant- aesthetic facts – but claiming that some garde, from Vladimir Tatlin and Kasimir facts can only be experienced in fiction, Malevich to Anni and Josef Albers. “The he created an intriguing account of the

10 Abstract Possible: The Stockholm Synergies traumatic experience of the violence functions as the “title page” of Ecstatic of war at once intimate and distant. In Resistance, a project, practice, partial Scratching on Things I Could Disavow philosophy, set of strategies and group the “hysterical documents” refer to exhibitions organized by Roysdon. In the history of art in the Arab world, 2010 two “sister” exhibitions were on specifically the fast development over the view simultaneously in Kansas City and last decade of a new infrastructure for New York, involving work by artists art. Writer Jalal Toufiq’s notion of “the such as Sharon Hayes, Yael Bartana, withdrawal of tradition past a surpassing Adrian Piper and A.L. Steiner. The disaster” helps Raad to elaborate on how silkscreen is a diagram—an important material and immaterial effects of war in vehicle for abstraction—of Ecstatic the region can be seen in art, culture and Resistance where “movement”, “struggle” tradition. In this series of abstract-looking and “improvisation” make up the core photographs and prints, he argues that surrounded by a circle of the “impossible”. while some results of war are material, like Roysdon even sees the impossible as a the destruction of libraries and museums, model for political plasticity. Beyond a colours, lines and shapes are also affected. green circle there is a “cloud” with space But the effects can also hide, hibernate for the imaginary as well as pleasure. and take refuge for a period of time. In Ecstatic Resistance is a call for many fact, his contention is that in the case of things: for understanding resistance this work, tradition is hidden not in art precisely as something pleasurable, for the itself but in the material surrounding art in importance of embodied, lived experience, Lebanon, in letters, price lists, diagrams, for the necessity of reorganizing the catalogues etc. cultural imaginary and re-imagining political protest. A co-founder of the queer Emily Roysdon (New York/Stockholm) collective and magazine LTTR, Roysdon employs performance, photography and Ecstatic Resistance (Schema), printmaking to explore the relationship silkscreen, 2009 between choreography and political This silkscreen by Emily Roysdon action.

Tommy Støckel (Copenhagen/Berlin) pieces that together form an intriguing candy-coloured cube. Thinking Small, In My Mind This Goes on Forever, a smaller—“handy”—version of In My styrofoam, 2012 Mind This Goes on Forever, is part of In Tommy Støckel’s sculptures the exhibition at Bukowskis. The result handicraft and science, speculation of a workshop conducted by Støckel with and optical phenomena are mixed pupils from Ross Tensta Gymnasium and together. Most of the materials he uses students from The School of Architecture’s in the laborious process of fabrication, preparatory course at the gymnasium is which retains the handmade, may be shown in the atrium of the school. bought in stationery stores and hobby shops: paper, cardboard, foam rubber Mika Tajima (Austin, Texas/New York) and glue are combined in remarkable detail. Like concrete artists such as Max The Extras, wood, plywood, industrial Bill and Richard Paul Lohse he often carpet, paper, video monitor uses systematic approaches borrowed from mathematics—a prominent field False Expectations, /(IV), Accessory of abstraction—such as permutations 4, White Out/Disunite, One being deaf of given geometrical shapes. However, and the other being mute, Today is Not he typically allows the system to also a Dress Rehearsal, Ad Hoc #9, Ad Hoc be personal and odd. Scales shift and #3, 2010 illusionistic techniques are at play. The sculptures refer to time travel, four- A Facility Based on Change III, Action dimensionality, new forms of life and Office I cubicle panels, canvas, wool how modernism could have looked if fabric, acrylic paint, cotton rag paper, it had been influenced by present-day silkscreen, pins, clips, 2011 mathematics and computer-generated The partition, or screen, is a recurring realities. In My Mind This Goes on element in the work of Mika Tajima. Being Forever was made for this exhibition both architecture and a type of furniture, and consists of approximately 6300 it can be at once a structural dividing translate 11 element and a surface, simultaneously Haegue Yang (Seoul/Berlin) breaking up a space and “hosting” other objects. A Facility Based on Change Dress Vehicles—Golden Clowning, III consists of original Herman Miller aluminum venetian blinds, powder-coated panels from the “Action Office” system, aluminum frame, casters, magnets, 2011 bought from a bankrupted telemarketing Displaced everyday objects are company and stretched with new canvas often part of Haegue Yang’s sensorial transforming the panels into monochrome installations, sculptures, objects and paintings. Invented by architect Robert videos. Dress Vehicles—Golden Propst (1964) and produced by the Clowning is one of plural performative company Herman Miller, the “action sculptures on casters where venetian office” introduced the ubiquitous, semi- blinds, one of her signature materials, are enclosed and flexible office cubicle. This combined with an aluminum armature tool for standardization and efficiency with handles. Like in Oskar Schlemmer’s continues to affect the contemporary Triadisches Ballett (1922) which Yang workplace, including its discontents. refers to in this series of sculptures, the As Tajima herself says, with the form of elemental and abstract is at the core of the cubicle “work and social interaction the work. Following the tradition of this were organized to control/produce life’s Bauhaus teacher, Yang also employs the abstractions”. Another topic of interest human body as a medium and allows for to the artist is “the slacker” as a figure a choreographed geometry. Formalism of resistance and self-determined refusal and sense of body meet, belonging and of work. The Extras, consisting of an detachment co-exist and the obscure is inventory of previous bodies of work, given a chance. Her baseline includes is a storage unit “refusing” to properly geopolitical conditions filtered through display its contents—a scene of surplus, subjective experience and high degrees of dereliction, and anticipatory potential. abstraction.

Frederick Kiesler 1890—1965 (Vienna/New York)

Correalist Instrument (two pieces), 1942

Rocker, 1942 When art collector Peggy Guggenheim’s legendary museum-cum-commercial gallery, Art of This Century, opened in New York in 1942 Correalist Instruments and Rockers furnished the space. Visionary architect and artist Frederick Kiesler not only designed the gallery but also its furniture. Art of This Century was a true sensation: its Surrealist, Abstract, Kinetic and Daylight Galleries offered an unprecedented experience of the work of the European avant-garde. As one headline put it: for the first time “modern art in a modern setting” was on offer. Even good photographs of the galleries cannot do justice to the presentation which had, for example, frameless paintings by Max Ernst and Joan Miro “floating” in front of undulating curved wooden walls in the Surrealist Gallery. Utopian architecture, stage design and retail display counted among Kiesler’s references and in the Abstract Gallery where the walls were covered with ultramarine curtains; pictures by Francis Picabia and Kasimir Malevich among others were hung on V-straps running from floor to ceiling like in a shop window. The flexible Correalist Furniture, with its seemingly arbitrary amorphous forms, was carefully designed by Kiesler to function as stands for both paintings and sculptures but also as seating.

12 Abstract Possible: The Stockholm Synergies