48.191088 / 16.375072 = 4 is the title of an exhibition of works by artists Bjarki Bragason, Marte Kiessling, Thomas Hörl and the Vienna based artist collective Perlimpinpin.
Kiessling, Hörl and Bragason collaborated with Hildigunnur Birgisdóttir on a publication project in 2013, titled MUS.RER.NAT.BOX5320·REYKJAVIK 119101 The project revolved around site research at a volcanic crater in the suburbs of Reykjavik. In the crater, the artists found a skeleton of a small Corvus Corax raven, along with an identity band belonging to the bird, holding a record of its place and date of birth, giving a clue to the movement and territory of birds within the crater. The publication investigated the meticulous recording of minor events, with the record of the particular raven’s life as a central subject. Continuing their collaboration, Kiessling, Hörl and Bragason entered a conversation with the Perlimpinpin collective on the subject of ways in which time is recorded. The artists approach the issue of time from a multitude of approaches, including research on climate change response, the recording and reworking on folklore and mythologies, and a documentaries of family histories.
Bjarki Bragason has for the past years worked on the subject of collisions in time and politics, investigating the sites where ideologies meet, and where the human- and geological time scales intercept. His work, Ten Thousand and One Years, presented in this exhibition derives from his research on scientific experiments taking place in Iceland, where carbon dioxide emissions are pumped deep into bedrock, crystallizing emissions, creating a stone fossil out of industrial waste. Thomas Hörl’s new piece Namedropping especially created for the exhibition, shows his long term research of Austrian and international constructed characters for folkloric plays in the Christmas and carnival seasons. On display you can read the names mounted in a collage work in a kind of passage, which divides the two main rooms of the exhibition space. In this gateway, drawn and painted curtains hang from above and create a stage for the Puadlmuata, the beautiful Perchten, Lutzlweibl, Thomaswaschl, etc. as well as for the viewer. In her recent work, Marte Kiessling researches her own family history along with archival pieces, aiming to find the connections between the past and the present and the direct results of her ancestor’s decisions in relation to her own life. In her two video works on view in the exhibition, Decisions (2014) and Across China (2016) she explains brief excerpts of her Great-Grandmother’s life. The works feature a dilemma. On one hand she depicts her as the woman she was – an early feminist with a clear vision of her own life, - on the other hand as the privileged and wealthy person she also was, with colonialist convictions and beliefs. Perlimpinpin, a Viennese artist collective contribute to the exhibition, as hosts of the project, with a collaborative piece.
The exhibition is generously supported by the Icelandic Art Center.
Image: Bjarki Bragason: Ten Thousand and One Years, 2016, photo c.: Sam Hartnett
