I will be wrapping up my curatorial residency at the Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership with a Myrtle Windows Gallery show. If you’ve ever walked down Myrtle Avenue during one of their shows, you’ll know that stumbling upon artwork in an unexpected place makes your walk a little nicer. (more…)

Pedro Gómez-Egaña is a Columbian artist who made Norway his home after graduating from the Bergen National Academy of Arts. Trained as both a visual artist and a composer, Gómez-Egaña combines sound, sculpture, drawing, the projected image, and mechanical devices to present theatrical installations that recall the heart string-tugging grandiosity of Disney’s golden age.

Gómez-Egaña uses choreography to great effect in his performances. Simple gestures like pulling strings, or more complex actions, like plucking a magnetized miniature space shuttle from thin air with a construction crane, form the basis for his investigation into the subtleties of motion. His works are performed with an economy of movement, yet they are able to manipulate the viewer’s emotions.

In his poignant installation Swimming Sideways, a paper dinosaur skeleton wilts like a neglected flower. The skeleton is connected to a mechanical device by a system of cables that rely on tension to control the movement. As the cables are coiled to their breaking point, different sections of the skeleton are subjected to gravity, one at a time.

studio

He showed me the beginning stages of a project he is working on for Oktoberdans, an international dance festival held in Bergen. He is still working out the details, but the piece will combine expressive drawings, lightbulbs, and skateboard wheels that are connected to tripods so that they can move along tracks like a camera dolly.

for Oktoberdans

The culmination of my curatorial residency at USF Verftet in Bergen, Norway, was a lecture at Landmark, part of the Bergen Kunsthall. This was one of my most active audiences, in terms of participation, which was fostered by the intimate size of the venue and the charged weather outside that made people feel like they accomplished something just by arriving.

I spoke mainly about how I fund and produce my projects, as well as what my overall curatorial concerns are. Despite the heavy financial benefits that are available to Norwegian artists, the audience was very receptive to the discussion of the economics of independent curating. I assume that my lecture made many of them vow to never leave the comfortable cradle of the Norwegian art scene.

Lecture @ Landmark

This photo is of the last slide, where I used the exhibition curated by Shaquille O’Neal at the Flag Foundation to discuss my views on how visible the curator should be. The slide is of the full-page ad for the exhibition in Artforum, in which none of the artworks in the show were reproduced, nor was the curator’s portrait taken by a participating artist. Nice one, Shaq.

Since 1994, there has been an ongoing discussion about hosting a biennial for contemporary art in Bergen. That year, a group of artists published The City of Bergen’s Action Plan for Arts and Artists 1995-2005 (the Arts Plan), which detailed a best practices guideline for nurturing the local art scene and keeping the talent in Bergen, instead of fleeing to Oslo or abroad. A slew of interesting projects and a biennial discussion quickly resulted from the manifesto but the biennial buzz eventually lost traction until recently, when the Bergen Commissioner for Culture Henning Warloe reintroduced the idea.

2009 saw a Biennial Conference that was hosted by the Bergen Kunsthall. A measured approach to the biennial decision, this symposium allowed for both local and international input from researchers, curators, and “biennial professionals.”

Perhaps the approach was too cautious; the biennial has been postponed until 2011. According to the Bergen Biennial Conference website, the postponement “resulted from an acknowledgment that the biennial format is presently being discussed and evaluated internationally.” More discussion ensues, but not much is being accomplished, it seems.

I am ambivalent about the idea of a Bergen biennial and more interested in the structure that has been generated for the biennial discussion. Maybe the biennial doesn’t need to manifest itself physically. The questions that were raised and continue to be answered in different ways can serve as Bergen’s biennial legacy. (more…)

The City of Bergen has invested in keeping artists in town after they graduate from the art academy, KHiB. Part of this strategy has been to facilitate the initiation of cultural projects by supporting studio collectives and communities that focus on special areas of interest (Flaggfabbrikken for photography; BEK for electronic arts; Trykkeriet for printmaking). This has helped to create a close-knit community and an open atmosphere for artistic production over the last decade.

The standard way that Bergen artists establish their studio collectives is by devising the list of participants, applying for funding, and then finding a building. Then they wait. If the group receives funding, they move in.

Bergen Kjøtt

A peculiar case is Bergen Kjøtt. Started by Annine Birkeland, Stig Anderson and Agnes Nedregard, this studio community found an old meat processing plant and invested their own money in its construction and renovation. Now they have a huge building filled with private and communal art studios, music rehearsal space, and an all-purpose first floor gallery. Eventually they will incorporate a café and a couple of smaller project spaces into the plan. (more…)

I will be speaking at Landmark in Bergen, Norway on April 28, 2010 at 7 pm. Landmark is part of the Bergen Kunsthall and since 2001, it has served as an incubator for the discussion of new ideas in contemporary art. Stop by if you’ll be in town.

Here is a description of the presentation:

NYC based curator Christina Vassallo will discuss her experiences organizing exhibitions in and out of the white cube. She is currently the curator in residence at USF Verftet, where she is researching Norwegian art funding practices.

After the talk, she will screen two video works by Sean Capone. The Time Tunnel is a narrative that unfolds through representations of time travel in cinema. Horizon (Suspension) is an elegy to the landscape in which the artist’s paternal line was raised and buried, in western Pennsylvania.

Landmark

I was able to find out about gallery openings almost immediately. Bergen has a small but integrated (and supportive) scene here, where you’re bound to bump into the same people three nights in a row.

• Lars Korff Lofthus @ Entrée Galerie
  I like the descriptive text for the show, which states “all places can become central through strategic work and branding.” It’s a cynical but true point, however the installation communicates something a little more hopeful than that sentiment.
• Ragnhild Ohma & Inga S. Søreide @ Visningsrommet USF
  In the main exhibition space of the multi-art complex that also houses my residency, USF presents paintings by Ragnhild Ohma and sculptures by Inga S. Søreide. Ohma manages to communicate different concerns through her restrained version of expressionism and references to national and personal traditions.
• Anna Christina Lorenzen & Imi Maufe @ Borggården USF Verftet
  This performative installation evolves over the course of a week, on display in the windows at USF.
• Archipelago, a World Map by Hamdi Attia @ Hordaland Art Centre
  A site-specific presentation of Attia’s ongoing project, since 2004.
• Kajermo Törner, Lisa Him-Jensen and Jacqueline Forzelius @ Prosjekt Alvøen
  A great show, combined with a mini-adventure. Prosjekt Alvøen lures the art crowd away from the city to a slightly remote space on the outskirts of town. Much like the Bellwether bus that drove Manhattanites from the L train stop to the gallery during its early Williamsburg days, the masterminds behind this project have chartered a boat and organized bus meet ups to make sure no one gets lost. The current show features work that takes a hard look at self-help techniques. One especially strong video work by Jacqueline Forzelius focuses on the uncomfortable subject/artist trying to make herself laugh.

Prosjekt Alvøen

What do you pack for a month-long curatorial residency in Bergen, Norway? Rain shoes and laptop are obviously essential items. I’ve also got three art-related books with me: Wouter Davidts & Kim Paice, The Fall of the Studio: Artists at Work, because I’m becoming obsessed with artists’ tools, especially the use (or disuse) of literal space in immaterial art; James Westcott, When Marina Abramovic Dies because seeing her superbly-designed current show at MoMA makes me want to understand her more; and Miwon Kwon, One Place After Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity for research. Finally, in anticipation of the 4 distraction-free weeks I’ll have at USF Verftet, I am planning on filling out a few applications for curatorial proposals, so I packed a couple of blank CD-ROMS (really, some organizations still require hard copies).

Studio at USF

Fjord view

But it won’t just be a cozy month in this lovely studio with an amazing view of the fjord. I’ve got an itinerary of studio visits and interviews with local arts professionals, as well as a panel discussion to plan—which will serve as the culmination of this residency.

I was initially attracted to this residency program after reading a 32-page profile of Norway in ArtReview magazine. Since the article was published, even more state money has been channeled into the active art scene here and I am basing my residency project, “Curator as Enabler,” on research into the local and national arts funding practices. Oh, America has so much to learn!