Exhibition

SÝN -Æsa Björk

10.10.14-16.11.14

S12 Open access studio and gallery

The Exhibition SÝN gives an insight into the work of one of S12’s founders, Æsa Björk. -an artist with great awareness of the properties and qualities of glass.

The body is a recurring theme in Æsa’s artistic practice, consisting of both sculpture and installations. Her work focuses on the different layers of experience and meaning. She is interested in the boundaries between the inner and outer layers of the human being, and how we perceive ourselves in a given situation. She often works with bold and poetic glass objects and incorporates both photo and video in her work.

 Among the works displayed are Impression II -an installation with two large photographs showing the artist’s naked body covered in heavy solid glass spheres, which at the same time both reveal and conceal the motif. At the other end of the scale we find, First Impression from the Measuring Device for Negative Space – a work so delicate that the shadow is almost more visible than the sculpture itself.

 Æsa uses many different techniques in her approach to glass (pâte de verre, casting, flame working) and is not afraid to explore new directions. SÝN is an exhibition that shows the many qualities that glass can represent – and a good example of the opportunities that open up with an in depth knowledge of the material.

 Æsa Björk was one of the founders of S12 in 2005, and was the managing director until the summer 2011. From then she has been its artistic advisor.  During 2011 – 2014 she was a visiting artist and faculty at Sculpture Dimensional Studies at NYSCC – Alfred University, NY.  In 1997 she received her Masters degree from the Glass Department of Edinburgh College of Art. She also studied as an exchange student at the Prague Academy of Art and Design with Professor Vladimir Kopecky in 1994.  She has spent considerable time at the Pilchuck Glass School both as a student, TA and Emerging Artist in Residence.  In 1996 she was an artist in residence at the Corning Museum of Glass.

Vernissage 10.10.14 at 7 pm. 

The Exhibition will be opened by prizewinning curator Bjørn Inge Follevaag. Music by Heidi og Problemene.

NOoSPHERE Arts in New York are proud to represent Fractured Lives/ Fragile Existences, curated by the esteemed Feng Boyi, Wang Dong and Bjørn Inge Follevaag and featuring the artists Æsa Björk (Iceland/Norway), Øyvind Johnsen (Norway), Gaby Steiner (Switzerland), and Liang Dantu (China).

So much in our lives depends on belonging. On being included and being seen. Being seen; as in being accepted and approved of by our peers, societies and cultures. Yet, this approval and sense of belonging are fragile elements – so easily disturbed or eviscerated by sudden and unforeseen outside factors like prejudice, intolerance or ignorance. This exhibition deals with some of these issues on a personal as well as a political level.

In our curatorial practices, we have always been fascinated by the storytellers. By building exhibitions in which the viewer may come out with a sense of having experienced something significant. Whether this ambition has been reached in the current exhibition remains to be seen. We have tried to avoid “artspeak”, the artificial language of the art world, because it doesn’t speak, it alienates. The message in this exhibition is no high-­‐brow statement to promote the curators’ intellectual superiority, but rather a quiet statement about the condition of things, and an appeal to listen and see.

PASS OVER by the Norwegian artist Øyvind Johnsen is a 30-­‐minute video based on the true story of a Jewish/German couple from the 1890’s. Nelly Hamburger and her German boyfriend Hans Grüner were not permitted by their respective parents to marry, so they eloped. They fled to Norway and spent one long fall together at Stalheim Hotel in Voss. This is also where they committed joint suicide. Nelly survived, but nobody knows what happened to her later in life. In this work, Johnsen talks about pain – about existential suffering, and of what could have been if prejudice and conformity had not stood in the way.

In her series of works titled Impressions, the Icelandic/Norwegian artist Æsa Björk discusses the boundaries of the body and the borders of trust. Æsa Björk talks about that which is, by way of a fragile, naked body in a glass coffin weighed down by hundreds of heavy glass marbles; a poetic comment on the traces life leaves on our bodies and the boundaries we use to protect it.

In her biographical video The Arthodox: the Freedom of Choosing Restriction about the New York artist Efroim Snyder, Swiss-­‐born Gaby Steiner describes the conscious choice of an artist within the contemporary field to embrace traditional faith and its paraphernalia, and the dilemmas involved in this transition from a so-­‐called modern lifestyle to committing to what many perceive as an old-­‐fashioned and archaic way of life.

Chinese-­‐born artist Liang Dantu talks about recreation and reincarnation in her surreal, but strongly compelling paintings. While they may appear as simple narratives at first glance, the works are laden with symbolism. Elements of fauna and flora are conscious observations of life’s fragility and a statement to the artist’s desire to protect and preserve all living things.