Knut Åsdam
Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin
29 October 2003 - 4 January 2004
An exhibition of two filmworks by the Norwegian multi-media artist Knut Åsdam opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 29 October. In this, his first showing in Ireland, Åsdam seeks to demonstrate how the architecture of a city can embody contemporary life.
'Filter City', 2003, is Knut Åsdam most ambitious film/video work to date. The work focuses on two women, their relationship to each other, to a larger social group and to a city that is in constant transformation – architecturally, socially and politically. The film is mostly shot outdoors in modern apartment/housing complexes, using scenes that are interchangeable with different Western cities. Through dialogue and filmic description of places and people, Knut Åsdam brings the characters into a narration with a city that is constantly changing socially and politically. 'Filter City' was first shown at the recent Istanbul Biennial.
The second work 'Cluster Praxis', 2002, deals with dancing as a form of social practice, and particularly as an expression of the desire for collectivety. The work is structured around the sound – a narrative mix of voice and ambient soundscapes – dominated by a five-minute-long poetic monologue. Writing in Artforum, Jordan Kantor, described the work as tracing an ever-deepening subjectivity with the “objective” camera.
Knut Åsdam was born in 1968, in Trondheim, Norway, and studied in London at Wimbledon College of Art and Goldsmiths College. He has exhibited extensively in the US and Europe and was selected for the Nordic pavilion in the 1999 Venice Biennale. His most recent shows include solo exhibitions at Klmens Gasser and Tanja Grunert, New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo, and Tate Britain, London.
A publication, with an essay by Simon Sheikh, Curator and Assistant Professor of Art Theory and Co-ordinator of the Critical Studies Programme, Malmo Art Academy, accompanies the exhibition.
IMMA - IRISH MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
Military Road, Kilmainham, Dublin 8
www.modernart.ie
