Press Release, October 2019
AGON
Nils Elvebakk Skalegård Ѻ Gisa Pantel Ѻ Anne-Sofie Overgaard Ѻ FRAND* Ѻ Áron Birtalan
Celsius Projects invites you to the third event and group exhibition in the Five Forms of Play series! This is the middle child of the group and as such can be quietly competitive and antagonistic… AGON is a category of play that relates to Competition, Antagonism, Tests, Athletic skill.
Are you the teammate or the opponent, the cheater or the spoilsport?
Within AGON there are the most amount of artists out of any of the other Five Forms Exhibitions and there are also artworks that take the most space, the most amount of consideration, the ultimate speed, the greatest care and the maximum amount of time. There is the launch of a toy company, an all encompassing textile work, "alternative" business ideas, a scam, and the fastest work of art in Malmö...
AGON is a place where the divination of just and righteous acts are settled through the proxy of violence, an enactment of skill and chance that tests the properties of a thing and decides a temporary winner. AGON is an orderly destruction, a temporary veil of order; it’s crunch time!
‘Five Forms of Play’ is a year-long project revolving around five group exhibitions, from March 29th 2019 to March 20th 2020. Over 20 artists are invited to collaborate with the artist, pedagogue and curator Francis Patrick Brady to create and learn together how to play with their work. To play with their work means to: vibrate, mock, invent, activate, remake, recreate, simulate, or destroy, in an abstract or physical sense; put simply it is an alternative way of seeing and engaging with the art. Each artist have been commissioned to create an artwork, or rethink a current artwork, so that it can be played in some way and all together they will play with each of the works as in symphony or in solo, as group exhibition or performance event.
From Bauhaus to Dada, Situationists to Fluxus, artists have utilised play and gamified speculation to funnel chaotic creative energies or disrupt the normal flow of reality to examine the hidden structures of society. Roger Caillois divided and described play in four unique forms and in this exhibition series those forms of play are applied as the titles and organising principles of each show; plus a fifth as the wildcard in the deck or the anti-category as the final show on March 20th 2020 (Spring Equinox). Like the village carnival, play allows us to invert the rules of the day and be together in a new invented temporary set of rules.
Opening reception: Friday 11th of October, 18-22 | Facebook event
Exhibition period: 12th - 17th of October 2019.
Opening hours: Saturday-thursday: 14-17 and by appointment.