Research image, Ireland. REAM, 2021. Courtesy of the Curator.
Press Release, September 2021
Above the Sky, Beneath the Ground
Anna Samsøe, Anne Guro Larsmon, Linnéa Gad, Iris Smeds
Curated by Rebekka Elisabeth Anker-Møller
SixtyEight Art Institute is very pleased to launch the third installment of its programme Memoirs of Saturn with the exhibition Above the Sky, Beneath the Ground curated by Rebekka Elisabeth Anker-Møller. This exhibition project unfolds into two exhibition parts: Biting the Nest, a group exhibition with Anna Samsøe, Anne Guro Larsmon, Linnéa Gad; followed by The Zombie Function, a solo exhibition by Iris Smeds. Together, the two parts of this exhibition project aim to reflect a contemporary and multi-layered curatorial research into the artistic meeting points and ideas around New Materialism, posthumanism, animism, and deep ecology in art. Please note that there are two exhibition periods within the same exhibition project, which include two separate openings, and a live event:
First opening (group exhibition): FRIDAY 1 October, 18:00-21:00.
Second opening (solo exhibition): FRIDAY 29 October, 18:00-21:00.
First Live Event: SATURDAY 2 October, 14:00-16:30. Featuring artists Anna Samsøe and Anne Guro Larsmon in conversation with curator Rebekka Elisabeth Anker-Møller; followed by a presentation by Swedish researcher, Jessica Backsell, PhD.
Exhibition period: 1 October - 27 November 2021.
BITING THE NEST
(First part, opening 1 October)
In the wake of the pandemic and encompassing climate changes, we face globally a state of diminishing control on both the societal and at the individual level. The modernist worldview and the capitalist systems that were developed to fit it have been proved unsustainable, triggering a new swathe of romanticized visions of nature in the Global North, both in concrete and spiritual terms. People are not only compelled to seek spaces for reflection and contemplation in the outdoors, but are also put under pressure by modern lifestyles to assume a certain performativity with nature. We have understood that nature can to some extent heal us, but the project to really embed our harmony with the natural world starts with an inward ability to dialogue with our own nature.
Therefore, what is key to understand is that WE ARE NATURE and that nature’s state is rough, as is our human condition. We have the option to learn to let go of control and ownership of the planet by dismantling anthropocentric worldviews, rather than continuing to drive them. To this end, the exhibition Biting the Nest, which is the first part of Above the Sky, Beneath the Ground, seeks to create a context for examining alternative and current structures explored by artists who are working with slow processes, deep research, re-connections, and reflectivity as methods for an artistic inwardness concerned with new dimensions of materiality and Gaia; i.e. Earth as a conscious being.
Biting the Nest shows contributions from three artists: Anna Samsøe, Anne Guro Larsmon and Linnéa Gad. Their works display a sensitivity in relation to their processing of materials and in the dialogue they create between the artworks in this group show, as well as through their different mediums and approaches.
In the case of Anna Samsøe, who makes clay sculptures combining human aspects and animal expressions with unknown forms, she creates evocative living hybrids that emphasize an uncanny experience of creation that is difficult to categorize. In Samsøe’s work, the materiality of sound is further examined in her sculptures through their play with the perception of reality and the physical environment itself.
In contrast, Anne Guru Larsmon studies the intelligence of flowers with inspiration from Charles Darwin’s drawings of plant movements executed in 1880. Darwin’s drawings also happen to be reminiscent of star maps, and through abstraction Larsmon has transformed the patterns of these into sculptures. She is concerned with materials, such as brass and steel, and also adds a series of glass works to this exhibition, which contain healing plants like Elderberry and poisonous ones as Lily of the Valley or Lady's Glove.
Linnéa Gad immerses herself in the investigation of limestone, oyster shells and lapis lazuli, driven by her fascination with materials that are different forms of one mineral - lime. Gad has on that account been searching for ways to sculpt only in lime, utilizing its diversity or its willingness to bind with different versions of itself. Her contribution in this exhibition then becomes an exercise in thinking about the life cycles of lime as material and understanding time frames beyond that of a single human.
By putting forward these different approaches to how to work consciously and ethically with materiality, this first exhibition part suggests how we can engage in the world around us in a more curious, empathetic and respectful way. To this end, this curatorial research project seeks to investigate different artistic approaches to materiality, performativity, and contemporary societal structures by broadening the perspective on engagement and re-connection. Hoping with the best of intentions that this will help cultivate new approaches for collective behaviour, between human and non-human entities, and through a phenomenological and non-hierarchical approach.
THE ZOMBIE FUNCTION
(Second part, opening 29 October)
The exhibition The Zombie Function, the second part of Above the Sky, Beneath the Ground, will work as an aesthetic contrast to the group exhibition Biting the Nest. It will reveal itself as a total installation that humorously and grotesquely processes the family as an institution and in extension an allegory of the State. Where the group exhibition examined a more concrete material approach through a conscious and ethical collaboration with distinct geological materials, Iris Smed’s solo exhibition opens questions about gender, biological materiality (the body) and the psychological intangible (family heritage), which operates on a more symbolic, social, and structural level.
Iris Smed’s work examines our existence and society from a poetic and performative perspective, and her project blurs the boundaries between installation, performance, video and sculpture, often with theatrical and surreal imagery. At SixtyEight Art Institute, Smeds will build a set design showing a total installation including two sculptures - Time and Space and Dog - alongside a new manuscript that is available for viewers to read and incorporated into the scene of the overall installation. The installation is a part of her ongoing film project ”The Little House in the Food Court” and at the end of the exhibition, she will shoot a new scene where a group of four will read the manuscript and give a round table talk about their own family roles. The exhibition works to put the family construct on display and interrogate the generational threats that lie within it. It also shows how humanity, because of its will to reproduce itself, tends also to reproduce its history and therefore risks making the same mistakes again and again if we do not reflect on the forms we have already created.
BIOS
Anna Samsøe (b. 1987) is a Danish artist who lives and works in Skive, Denmark. Samsøe graduated from the Funen Academy of Fine Arts and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. She works across various materials and media as clay and sound, where she is interested in investigating ideas of reality and immateriality. Samsøe’s work has been exhibited at Gl. Holtegaard, Brandts 13 and Gl. Strand among others. www.annasamsoee.com
Anne Guro Larsmon (b. 1981) is a Norwegian artist based in Oslo and Los Angeles with a BFA from Bergen National Academy of the Arts and a MFA from California Institute of the Arts. Her work is mostly based on analytical research, ideas and content derived from a scientific point of view as well as mythological and cinematographic heritage. Larsmon’s work has been exhibited at the Jace Space (LA), Vigeland Museum (NO), IAC Malmö (SE) and Charlottenborg Kunsthal (DK) among others. www.anneguro.com
Linnéa Gad (b. 1990) is a Swedish artist with a BFA in Fine Arts from Parsons The New School for Design and is currently earning her MFA in Fine Arts at Columbia University School of The Arts in New York. With landscape as her subject matter, Gad explores geological change, calling for empathy for the earth’s resources through printmaking, sculpture and installations. Recent solo exhibitions include Erratics at Spencer Brownstone Gallery and Mound Remover at New Release Gallery in NYC. Her first publication is to be released with RSS Press in 2022. www.linneagad.com
Iris Smeds (b. 1984) lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden. Iris Smeds has participated in several large group and solo exhibitions in recent years, nationally and internationally. In 2019, she received the Maria Bonnier Dahlin Stipend and is represented in the collections of Maria Bonnier Dahlin and Moderna Museet.
Rebekka Elisabeth Anker-Møller (b. 1984) is an independent curator with a curatorial practice concerned with new media, biomimicry, social structures, gender and performativity. She holds an MA in Visual Culture from Copenhagen University and an international MA in Curation from Aarhus University. Earlier she co-organized the exhibition space RØM and assisted the performance project VEGA|ARTS, as well as producing exhibitions at Kunsthal Aarhus and Holstebro Kunstmuseum. Currently she is working as a consultant on the sculpture park project 17 Goals on My Mind in Anneberg Kulturpark, Odsherred, DK.
SixtyEight Art Institute is an artistic/curatorial research organisation looking to uncover, develop, and further exchanges between artists and curators and their creative labour. The exhibition Above the Sky, beneath the Ground is the third in our two-year programme Memoirs of Saturn, which will be looking to rethink the concept of 'prosperity' as a common value we have the chance to develop through art, in and with nature. The programme is kindly supported by the Danish Arts Foundation, Det Obelske Familiefond, and Beckett-Fonden. The current exhibition has been kindly supported by Knud Højgaards Fond, William Demant Fonden and Rådet for Visuel Kunst - Københavns Kommune. Thank you also to Maria Bonnier Dahlin Foundation in Stockholm for lending a work by Iris Smeds in relation to her solo exhibition.