Foto: Artefact1.
Pressemeddelelse, august 2020
Den 5. september 2020 åbner Simian - en uafhængig platform for eksperimenterende samtidskunst iværksat og drevet af billedkunstnere.
Simian har til huse i et 1300m2 betonrum under en anlagt sø på Kay Fiskers Plads i den centrale del af Ørestad. Oprindeligt er stedet bygget til cykelparkering, men har stået ubenyttet hen i en årrække. Efter en gennemgribende renovering er lokalerne nu omdannet til udstillingssted.
Ørestad kendetegnes ved sin storstilede arkitektur opdelt af markante infrastrukturelle linjer. Større virksomheder, hoteller, boligkvarterer og et af Nordens største indkøbscentre omkranses af byggetomter og vidtstrakte naturområder. Ørestad er et igangværende eksperiment i at skabe en ny bydel fra grunden, og med Simian får Ørestad nu et nyt samlingspunkt for kunst.
Simian kommer til at danne ramme om udstillinger og arrangementer, som vil belyse og udfordre komplekse forbindelser og perspektiver i vores fælles oplevelse, forståelse og navigation i samtiden. Simian vil præsentere skiftende solo- og gruppeudstillinger i et udstillingsprogram, der sammenkobler kunstnere på tværs af generationer, medier og nationaliteter.
Simian er initieret af Markus von Platen, Christian Vindelev, Toke Flyvholm og Jan S. Hansen.
Bill Jenkins, Lid on bowl. Foto: Chris Cardinale.
Åbningsudstilling “Some of the Hole”
Udstillende kunstnere: Bill Jenkins, Falke Pisano, Christian Vind, Ghislaine Leung, Signe Boe, Jacob Borges, Penny Slinger, Michael Kennedy Costa, K.R.M. Mooney, Thomas Locher, Violet Dennison, Marie Søndergaard Lolk, Thomas Bo Østergaard, Lucia Elena Průša og Willy Ørskov.
Simian is pleased to present Some of the Hole, an exhibition that draws coordinates between architecture, nature, body, mind and art; a mapping that explores notions of spaces, gaps and holes in their individual and collective states. The exhibition presents a selection of artists working in an array of media from handcrafted and readymade to painting, drawing and text. The works are presented as autonomous objects, derived from personal and singular positions. Assembled as parts of a constructed setting, they align and expand into configurations of material and symbolic synergy.
Some of the Hole relates to the geographical surroundings of the exhibition space. In the recent past, Ørestad was a natural reserve in an outlying part of Copenhagen, which city planners turned into a metropolitan area over the course of just twenty years. The newly built city is characterized by large-scale modern architecture, traversed by sharp infrastructural lines. Corporate businesses, hotels, housing areas and one of the largest shopping malls in Scandinavia are surrounded by vacant lots and large expanses of grasslands and preserved nature. A terrain vague, a void with the potential to be filled, built upon and inhabited; Ørestad is an ongoing experiment in how to conceive an environment for future generations.
Psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan asserts that, metaphorically, architecture can be seen as a structure around an inner void, a lack as he calls it. The only function of this, is to present the void which it is built around. Like a vase, characterized by the space it encompasses. Art, as he perceives it, is the representation of the void itself, an imaginary transfiguration of something that is lacking in us all. That which is placed inside the architectural frame as fleeting content. This symbiotic construction of changing desires and unknown wants, never to be wholly filled, leaves us in search of an ungraspable object, the shape of the hole.
When the Surrealists examined the relationship between dream and reality, they considered architecture to be a representation of reality and the boundaries of both the external and internal world. Within this construct, the spirit can roam free in a dreamlike manner, able to challenge confining frameworks and find new outlets. An unrestricted type of worldbuilding, where new territories, landscapes and constructions unfold and reveal themselves. As a place of inception, from where elusive ideas can emerge and bind themselves in material form as works of art.
Some of the Hole is a communal site, an interface that intends to question the spaces and holes in and between things that can't be directly addressed, though present in their intrinsic absence.
Fernisering: D. 5. september kl. 15-21.
Performance af Sunset Provision Choir (Signe Boe, Sofie Amalie Andersen and Nathalie Cohn), kl. 18. (Sundhedsmyndighedernes Covid-19 anvisninger følges. Der tages forbehold for ændringer).
Udstillingsperiode: D. 5. september - 17. oktober, 2020.
Åbningstider: Torsdag-lørdag: 12-17.
Simian er realiseret med støtte fra By & Havn, Realdanias kampagne Underværker, Det Obelske Familiefond, Statens Kunstfond, Augustinus Fonden, Aage og Johanne Louis-Hansen Fonden, Københavns Kommune, Amager Vest Lokaludvalg og Ørestad City Grundejerforening.