Group Show: 5 - 9

We welcome you to a four hour exhibition focused on addressing the unease that exists in the equation time = money, and the production system derived from it.

With works by:
Andrew Birk
Dieter Roth
Ermanno Cristini
Kristján Guðmundsson
Patricia Carolina
Wendy Cabrera Rubio

In modern western society, eight hours is considered a standard period of time for a day of paid labour; this period is normally referred to as 9 to 5. The exhibition 5 to 9 addresses an unease towards the instrumentalization of time by the global economy through the equation time = money. It opens up the possibility to review what it is that working means by altering, reverting and playing with this conceptual time-labour shift.

After the industrial revolution, the production system turned into a standard process that aimed at reducing the time and cost of the production of objects to satisfy the growing needs and desires of increasing numbers of consumers. High speed production allows companies to produce more while raising profit, and, since this was accepted as a basic rule, the assembly-line took over manufacturing and handcrafting, changing the human experience of work completely.

Working used to be a know-how; a sequence of gestures that lead to the creation of objects, as well as a sequence of thoughts, which would lead to a discovery or the creation of a more complex theory, a personal procedure which would turn the final product into a reflection of the producer’s experience. This subjectivity in the production process has been lost in a vortex of high demand by consumers and the greed of companies.

The selected artists: Andrew Birk, Patricia Carolina, Ermanno Cristini, Kristján Guðmundsson, Dieter Roth, Wendy Cabrera Rubio work towards analyzing, criticizing, exploring or reversing either specific steps of the contemporary productive process or the mechanism as a whole. The artists seek to discover forgotten human values, such as discovery, pleasure and playfulness by reflecting on and restoring working as a human experience, thereby undermining the rules of the mass production process and the mechanism as a whole.

Curated by students in Creating and Curating Exhibitions at the Iceland University of the Arts:

Ana Victoria Bruno
Andri Þór Arason
Bernharð Þórsson
Birkir Mar Hjaltested
Daníel Ágúst Ágústsson
Disa Lareau
Dorothea Olesen Halldorsdóttir
Helena Reynis
Hugo LLanes
Inga Haraldsdóttir
María Hjelm
Sunna Björk Erlingsdóttir
Vigdís Þóra Másdóttir
Þórhildur Einarsdóttir
Instructed by Becky Forsythe

Furthert information / Facebook event