Look At This World - Amazon Web Services...Look At This World Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen 15...

ASMUND HAVSTEEN-MIKKELSEN: LOOK AT THIS WORLD

Look At This World

Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen

Look At This World

Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen

15 Clerkenwell Close, London, EC1R [email protected]+44 (0) 207 253 3039

www.foldgallery.com

54

ASMUND HAVSTEEN-MIKKELSEN: LOOK AT THIS WORLDASMUND HAVSTEEN-MIKKELSEN: LOOK AT THIS WORLD

On waking up, Mr. B was keenly aware of the fact that he had had too much to drink the night before: after a successful bid on a prop-erty in the central district, he had decided to celebrate by inviting some friends to dinner, which turned into a long night of conversation. The sun shone brightly through the muslin curtains and reflected on his iPhone, reminding Mr. B that he had an appointment that morning. Grab-bing the phone to check the time, he saw that he would have to get up in a hurry and get going. It was in such a state that Mr. B made his way to Mr. H’s studio.

On his way to an appointment he didn’t really know why he made, it struck Mr. B that he didn’t really know what this meeting was going to be about. Mr. H had contacted Mr. B out of the blue, and had merely said that he wanted to contract him for some work. On the way to the meeting, Mr. B realized that he had never been to the part of town where Mr. H’s office was located; it was outside of the center of town and in an area that seemed as if it had popped up over night. But what better setting could be provided to the architects who wanted to ex-periment with big building blocks?

Large, tall imposing buildings filled the space with seriousness, and as Mr. B walked up to the building—one of many look-alikes—he was filled with a mild apprehension. Why was he here?

Mr. B found his way to the right building, but the intercom didn’t seem to be working, so he called Mr. H and said he had arrived. Mr. H took Mr. B into the building, which seemed to be mostly empty—occupied with yet-to-be-filled offices and studios. Mr. B worried that without his guide he might get lost in the maze of rooms and offices. The upper, darker levels of the building were left empty by Mr. B’s imagination.

Despite the odd feeling he had had, Mr. B actually found Mr. H’s office comfortable and welcoming. What immediately caught his eye was a black leather office chair. It wasn’t the kind you see some CEO sitting in; it lacked armrests, and it wasn’t made of ornamental mahogany. The chair looked much simpler, with plain leather and thin black metal tubing; it looked as if it could be an-yone’s office chair and its anonym-ity matched the inconspicuousness of the building it was located in. The black leather shone in the mild

Aaron Bogart

76


light of the room that was filtered through venetian blinds and the impersonality of its back and seat almost began to look friendly.

Mr. H asked Mr. B to sit, while he ex-plained what was to be done, what the rules were to be. Mr. B sat and listened, and he adjusted to his sur-roundings—as somebody who has to work in an office cubicle for the first time adjusts himself as quickly as he can. And Mr. B began to appreciate the image of the chair in his pre-sent surroundings. The chair doesn’t care who sits in it, or where it is placed; it’s just an object, one among many whose formal qualities allow freedom and open-ended interpre-tation—it could belong to anyone. Looking at the chair, at its place-ment before a desk, with nothing but shadows falling around it, Mr. B be-gan to see the absence of what you would normally expect to find on a desk—a computer, a phone, papers, and so on—as a relief. It was a relief from the burden of the humdrum of the everyday. The workaday routine was thwarted by this absence, and it set Mr. B fully back at ease.

The lines of its appearance were ex-act, but if you looked close enough, subtle imperfections were to be

found: splotches of color here and there, and from one perspective an almost loss of dimensionality. These traces of humanity were reassuring, they seemed to tell Mr. B that this object is part of the continuum of life too; an object that adds something to our life, perhaps making it easier, giving us relief—relief from tired feet or perhaps merely distracting us.

Mr. B wondered whether it isn’t this absence—the unoccupied space that surrounds the chair—that could provide answers to his questions. But where was the chair that Mr. B saw? Was it only in his mind, or was it part of the furniture of life? Could it have been more than one? Could there have been many chairs? We’ll never know the answer to these questions because Mr. B walked out of Mr. H’s office, through the deso-late area surrounding it, and back to the center of town, never to be heard from again.

—Aaron Bogart

Aaron Bogart, *1975, is a freelance editor and writer. He has edited for Hatje Cantz and Taschen, and has contributed to www.Artforum.com and Modern Painters, as well as to artist monographs. Prior to 2011 he tutored in philosphy at the Univeristy of Sheffield, where he also wrote his PhD. He currently lives between New York City and Berlin.

98


Look At This World – A Ventilated Prose-Performance

by Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen, Berlin, 2013

What first amazed me

about Jacques T.

was his ability to convey space

as a subject with its own will.

And in this game of spaces,

the human being was almost

a puppet,

seemingly free,

subdued to a spatial logic

that it itself had created

and yet now had become the slave of.

Are we ready for Playtime?

A tribute

to art as an attempt to overcome reality,

to superimpose upon reality an image

more real than the world itself,

the constructed world of his own:

Tati Ville.

In this new world,

a hyperworld,

he presents an eternal laughter

of blinking neon lights, spinning chairs, and a general

feeling of disorientation.

What have we done to ourselves?

Are we not still but small figments:

flesh, bones and blood hovering in the universe,

pretentious and suffering from vanity?

The laughter is actually self-laughter:

we produce abstract structures

that protect us from the violence of being,

yet which in return make us live in a world

where we are not quite at home.

Is this really what we want?

This matrix of egoism and self-interest?

Take a look at this world.

Be a stoic.

Develop your own cosmic consciousness.

Here we are,

five years after a global meltdown,

a morgage crisis, a hysteria lane,

and the system is still functioning.

Did anything really happen to capitalism,

to the wars it is waging

against the human race

1110


in its search for

new markets,

new territories,

new ressources,

new cheap labour?

If I could,

I would get away.

Disappear.

A great escape

to a land of beginnings.

Not a nobody,

just a body.

Tati:

a world of analogue media.

Us:

a digital world,

immersing us

into a time of white heat,

saturated with swaps, swipes and bytes.

And yet, am I really here?

Tati created the world of the future,

which became real:

his office world of steel, glass and polished marble

is today the setting of headquarters

deciding the direction of capitalism.

A prefiguring of a critique

of contemporary modern life.

Be aware of how any spatial or

representational logic transforms you.

You think you are using it, but it is using you.

Slam your doors

in golden silence.

It makes you feel better.

When he came to my new studio

at Storkower Str. in Berlin,

Mr. B. said to me:

“Mr. H., you have finally arrived

in the world of your own paintings!”

But only recently

did I realise that the colour-grades of my new paintings,

the futuristic blue of Tati and the flat yellow,

were on the facade of the building opposite me.

An architecture for a world

that once belonged to a radiant future,

but today is viewed as a ruin,

ready for demolition.

We are back from utopia,

only to rediscover our own place.

For the first time,

there has been

a discernable osmosis

between my architectural surroundings and

my actual artistic output.

There is a time-texture to my life,

and my spaces,

doubled with my own sense of failings,

shortcomings and disappointments.

I am in a face-space,

always reappearing to myself

as a stranger to be known.

1312

b. 1977, Aeroe, (DK). Lives and works in Berlin. www.asmundhavsteen.net

EDUCATION 2003-09 MFA, Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen. 2007-08 Hochschule für Bildende Kunst, Hamburg. 2004-05 CCA Research Program, Kitakyushu, Japan. 1996-03 MA in literature and philosophy, University of Copenhagen.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2013 Look At This World, Fold Gallery, London 2012 Blue Devils, Galerie MøllerWitt, Aarhus, Denmark. 2011 The Future Begins at Home, Rønnebæksholm ArtCenter, Denmark. 2010 Estrangement City, Politikens Galleri, Copenhagen. Meditations on the Uncanny, Helene Nyborg Contemporary, Copenhagen. 2008 Life in the Box, Helene Nyborg Contemporary, Copenhagen. 2007 Supernumeral (with Emil W. Hertz), Marstal Museum, Aeroe. 2006 Mentalscapes, Helene Nyborg Contemporary, Copenhagen. Frontal/Sideways, The Scandinavian House, Prague. 2004 Melting Barricades (with Inuk Silis Høegh), North Atlantic House, Copenhagen, and Katuaq, Nuuk, Greenland. Collapsing Structures (with Rune Søchting and Jonas Olesen), The Projectroom, Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen.

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2012 Needle In A Cloud, Fold Gallery, London. Snowtime, Galleri KANT, Esbjerg, Denmark. 2011 Enter II, Kunsthallen Brandts, Odense, Denmark. Summer Salon, Helene Nyborg Contemporary, Copenhagen. Primitive Accumulation, Fold Gallery, London. Uferhallen Kunstaktien, Uferhallen, Berlin. 3-1Kunstauktion, Kunsten, Aalborg. Painterly Delight II, Ystad Konstmuseum, Sweden. 2010 Geist III, Auguststr. 17, Berlin. No Food No Drink No Sticky Lollies, Stadtbad Wedding, Berlin.

Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen Painterly Delight, Art Centre Silkeborg Bad, Denmark. Greetings to Ib Geertsen, Danish Graphic Center, Copenhagen. Radical Adults, The Forgotten Bar Project, Berlin. CRW – Contemporary Reflections on Warfare, BKS Garage, Copenhagen. Copenhagen City Art Collection 2006-2009, Copenhagen. The Hello Show, Helene Nyborg Contemporary, Copenhagen. Art in the Blood, Utzon Center, Aalborg. A Formal Figure, Galerie im Regierungsviertel, Berlin. 2009 Out of Wedding, UferHallen, Berlin. Formation, Halle 41, Berlin. Exit, Gl. Strand, Copenhagen. 2008 Jahresausstellung, HfBK, Hamburg. InnenRaum, Galerie MøllerWitt, Aarhus, Denmark. 2007 Autolabor, Brandenburgischer Kunstverein Potsdam e.V., Germany. PT07, Vestjyllands Kunstmuseum, Tistrup, Denmark. 2006 Proverbs, Portalen, Greve, Denmark. Re-thinking Nordic Colonialism, The Living Art Museum, Nifka, Reykjavik, Iceland. Contemporary Art, Spring Exhibition, Charlottenborg, Copenhagen. 2005 Total Production, Islands Brygge 83, Copenhagen. 2004 Typhoon, Maeda Studio, Kitakyushu, Japan. Minority Report, Aarhus, Denmark. 2003 Young Contemporary Art, Frederiks Bastion, Copenhagen and Inkonst, Malmø, Sweden.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 2013 Approximations, in Dialogues – Gruntuch & Ernst, Distanz Verlag, Berlin. 2012 Malene Birkelund: Videnskaben lagt i blød, Fyens Stiftstidende, 19. Dec. 2012. Arne de Boever: Stand By for Hyperdrive, Text for Blue Devils exhibition, Nov. 2012. Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen, Kunsten.nu., Nov. 2012. 2011 Enter II, catalogue, Kunsthallen Brandts, Odense, 2011. The Future Begins at Home, catalogue, Rønnebæksholm, Næstved, 2011. Dina Feilberg: Subtile Undersøgelser af Rum, Kunstmagasinet Janus, Juni 2011. Arne de Boever: New Wounds, in Primitive Accumulation, Catalogue, London, 2011.

1514


2010 Estrangement City, Politiken, October 28th, 2010. Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen, Information, July 24th,, 2010. Meditations on the Uncanny, catalogue, Lettre Publishing, Copenhagen, 2010. Kunsten at føle sig hjemme, radio-interview, P1 – Vita, May, 2010. 2009 Lettre International 20 Jahre Mauerfall (visual contribution), Berlin und Europa, 2009. Beyond Architecture – Imaginative buildings and fictional cities, p. 40-41. Edited by Lucas Freireiss, Gestalten Verlag, Berlin, 2009. 2008 Melting Barricades, Sleek Magazine, Berlin, December 2008. The Way We Live Now (visual contribution), Lettre Internationale, 2008. Bente Scavenius: Klinisk renset for liv (review), Børsen, August 2008. 2007 Torben Weirup: Udflugt til Blokland, Danish Art 07, Aschehoug, Copenhagen, 2007. Jesper Rasmussen: På Kant med Byens Dybder, Kunstmagasinet Janus, September 2007. The Celeste Art Prize 2007, catalogue, London, 2007. 2006 Proverbs, catalogue, Portalen, Greve, 2006. Frontal/Sideways, catalogue, The Scandinavian House, Prague, 2006. 2005 May Misfeldt: Melting Barricades, Danish Art 05, Aschehoug, Copenhagen, 2006. Intimate Absence, Patrick Huse (ed.), Delta Press, and Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Norway, 2005. CCA Research Program 2004-2005, cataloque, Kitakyushu, Japan, 2005. 2004 Melting Barricades, catalogue, North Atlantic House, Copenhagen, 2004.

GRANTS 2011 Henry Heerup Legatet. The Danish Art Counsil

COMMISSIONS 2013 Approximations, in Dialoges, Gruntuch & Ernst, Distanz Verlag, Berlin. 2012 Space of Complementarity, The Science Building, Nyborg Gymnasium. Interferens, site-specific painting at Jazzhus Montmartre, Copenhagen.

1716

The Great Escape2013130x100cmOil on canvas Analogue, 2013, 152x102cm, Oil on canvas

1918


Matrix2013120x180cmOil on canvas Face Space, 2013, 80x55cm, Oil on canvas

2120


Slam Your Doors2013

130x100cmOil on canvas

Hysteria Lane2013


2322


Time-Texture2013


White Heat2013


2524


26


Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen:

Look At This World

This catalogue is published on the occasion of the exhibition:Look At This Worldat Fold Gallery, London, 21 June – 20 July 2013.

Editor: Asmund Havsteen-MikkelsenCopy-editor: Melissa LarnerDesign: Matti Kunttu / TstoPrinter: 1stByte

© 2013 Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen, Aaron Bogart, and Fold Gallery.

Fold Gallery15 Clerkenwell CloseLondon EC1R 0AA

www.foldgallery.com

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any matter whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Photo credits: Uwe Walter and Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen.

With thanks to:

Arne de BoeverAaron BogartRosie BoycottPeter Linde BuskDan DavisJonna & Troels Engberg-PedersenEleanor Havsteen-FranklinCollette Havsteen-MikkelsenBoris Boll JohansenMatti KunttuDaisy LeitchSøren LoseLotte MøllerPhilippa RamsdenIlka & Andreas RubyKim SavageCharlie VineyTom VineyLars Møller Witt

Special thanks to:Anna, Johan, Caroline & Emil

Look At This World - Amazon Web Services...Look At This World Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen 15...

Documents

Transcript of Look At This World - Amazon Web Services...Look At This World Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen 15...