Pablo Bronstein
Pablo Bronstein works with drawing and performance, combining architecture and theatre. He is interested in the city as a stage, with the surrounding buildings reminiscent of backdrops. In addition to presenting his performance piece at the exhibition at Bonniers Konsthall, Bronstein displays a new, 10-metre-long drawing entitled Design for a Magnificent Silver-Gilt Dinner Service Interspersed with Triumphal Arches at Undetermined Distance.
Pablo Bronstein presents his performance piece Famous Deaths from European Literature, based on several tragic endings in the history of theatre. Actors Danilo Bejarano, Janna Granström and Peter Engman are accompanied by Royal Dramatic Theatre conductor Göran Martling on baroque piano.
Pablo Bronstein was born in 1977 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and lives and works in London, UK. His work has been presented at several major museums around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA, and Tate Britain, London, UK.
Performance: Famous Deaths from European Literature 3 – 12 December
Within the framework of Scene Shifts, Pablo Bronstein presents his performance piece Famous Deaths from European Literature, based on several tragic endings in the history of theatre. The three actors are accompanied by Royal Dramatic Theatre conductor Göran Martling on baroque piano. The ensemble comprises Danilo Bejarano, Janna Granström and Peter Engman.
Miriam Bäckström
In a series of works, Miriam Bäckström has explored the relationship between the staged and the real. Through photography, film and sound, she creates tension between truth and fiction. In the exhibition, she shows a new display case and some photo-mirror combinations that, among other things, portray Royal Dramatic Theatre actress Rebecka Hemse, with whom she is engaged in a long-term collaboration.
Miriam Bäckström was born in 1967 in Stockholm, Sweden, where she lives and works. Selected exhibitions include Betraktaren/The Viewer at Nils Stærk in Copenhagen, Denmark, (2006) and Allusive Moments at Rena Bransten Gallery in San Francisco, USA (2007).
Keren Cytter
In Keren Cytter’s video Something Happened, we witness a relationship drama between a woman and a man within a simply decorated home. Her video is inspired by author Natalia Ginzburg’s novel The Dry Heart from 1947, which deals with a murder in a marriage. In Keren Cytter’s work, she breaks down the storyline by allowing the actors to replicate the same scene over and over, repeating their lines.
In her films Keren Cytter reworks narrative structures and allows images, monologues and dialogues to merge into a format reminiscent of video diaries or amateur films. In 2009 she created her first stage performance and has since worked with her own company.
Born in 1977 in Tel Aviv, Israel, Keren Cytter lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Selected exhibitions include Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden (2010); Witte de With, Rotterdam, Holland (2008); and Younger than Jesus, New Museum, New York, USA (2009).
Inci Eviner
Inci Eviner works with computer-animated video, often based on older patterns or artworks. In Harem she sets out from Antoine Ignace Mellings’ engraving of the same title. At the end of the 18th century, Mellings was invited to Istanbul by Sultan Selim III. During his 18-year visit he produced numerous engravings of life in the city, including the Sultan’s harem. In Inci Eviner’s work, the women begin to move and assume roles and thus disappear from Mellings’ almost scientifically precise illustrations.
Born in Polatli, Turkey, Inci Eviner lives and works in Istanbul. Selected exhibitions include Nouveau Citoyen, Musée MAC/VAL Vitry-sur-Seine Paris, France (2009); ARTDUBAI (2009); and Don’t Worry, You Will Not Get Hurt, Galeri Nev, Istanbul, Turkey (2005).
Gabriela Fridriksdottir
Gabriela Fridriksdottir’s dreamlike imagery is strongly influenced by Icelandic mythology. Her films, drawings, sculptural installations and performances often depict pain and melancholy. Her characters appear to be amoeba-like spirits that move in a trance. Gabriela Fridriksdottir’s works are often developed in collaboration with other artists, including the musician Björk and the composer Johann Johannsson. In the exhibition she displays the sculptural installation Inside the Core and the performance piece Fermentation, with the dancer Erna Omarsdottir.
Gabriela Fridriksdottir was born in 1971 in Reykjavik, Iceland, where she lives and works. Selected exhibitions include Coagula, Flowers of Evil Still Bloom, Cueto Project, New York, USA (2008); Ouroboros, Speilhaus-Morrison Gallery, Berlin, Germany (2007); and Life? Biomorphic Shapes in Sculpture, Kunsthaus, Graz, Austria (2007).
Dance performance: Fermentation 24 November
Gabriela Fridriksdottir’s characters appear to be amoeba-like spirits that move in a trance, drawing references to age-old theatrical rites and Icelandic mythology. Her works are often developed in collaboration with other artists, including the musician Björk and the composer Johann Johannsson. In the exhibition she displays the sculptural installation Inside the Core which will be activated through the dreamy dance performance Fermentation, featuring the dancer and choreographer Erna Omarsdottir and composer Valdimar Jóhansson.
Ragnar Kjartansson
Ragnar Kjartansson is known for his mixture of visual art, theatre and music. In his performances, which are often extended over long periods of time, from hours to months, the artist paints and sings while portraying different characters. His references are diverse, covering everything from Viking sagas to contemporary pop music and are characterised by a struggle between conflicting emotions.
At Bonniers Konsthall, Kjartansson displays his installation God. In a gallery covered in pink satin, a projection is screened in which Kjartansson, supported by 11 musicians, repeatedly sings the words ‘Sorrow Conquers Happiness’. The melancholic message is delivered in true Frank Sinatra style, interfusing the 1930s with our contemporary age.
For Scene Shifts, Ragnar Kjartansson has also developed the performance Chamber Play, a classic chamber drama in an entirely new format, which will be performed at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in December.
Born in 1976 in Reykjavik, Iceland, Ragnar Kjartansson lives and works in New York, USA. Selected exhibitions include Making Worlds, 53rd Venice Biennal, Italy (2009); Manifesta 8, Roverto, Italy (2008); and Moleskine Exhibition, ADC Gallery, California, USA (2007).
Performance: Chamber Play 4 december
For Scene Shifts, Ragnar Kjartansson has developed the performance Chamber Play, a classic chamber drama in an entirely new format. A man and a woman, played by Rikard Lekander and Thérèse Brunnander, find themselves in a living-room where they address each other in emotional and heart-rending words. The performance goes on for four hours and the dialogue is repeated time and time again with small adjustments. The audience is free to enter and leave the auditorium during the performance.
Ylva Ogland
In her works, Ylva Ogland moves between parallel worlds. Behind a mirror the artist meets her alter ego, Snöfrid, and in the work Snöfrid’s Distillery, the artist brings forth Snöfrid distilled into a beverage. The ritualistic side to her work is presented as an installation at Bonniers Konsthall.
For the exhibition Scene Shifts, Ylva Ogland has also developed a new installation, Snöfrid and the Seeing Place, with the starting point in the collaboration with the Royal Dramatic Theatre, where Snöfrid has been embodied as a life-size puppet. Depicted as a kind of birth ritual, Snöfrid dances on the Royal Dramatic Theatre’s main stage. The dance has been filmed and is presented in a model of the Royal Dramatic Theatre’s main stage at Bonniers Konsthall. The work can be viewed through a peep hole from the street. Inside the exhibition, the viewer encounters the life-size puppet and Ylva Ogland’s paintings and other props.
Born in Umeå, Sweden, in 1974, Ylva Ogland lives and works in New York, USA, and Stockholm, Sweden. Selected exhibitions include Behind the Shadows, Remap 2, Athens, Greece (2009); She Who Shows the Way – Falling Asleep, ShugoArts, Tokyo, Japan (2008); and Face to Face, Galleria Vitamin, Turin, Italy (2007).
Performance: Snöfrid and the Seeing Place 10 November
For Scene Shifts, Ylva Ogland has developed a new installation, Snöfrid and the Seeing Place, with the starting point in the collaboration with the Royal Dramatic Theatre. Ogland’s alter ego Snöfrid has been embodied as a life-size puppet, and in a film screened during the exhibition, she dances a sort of birth ritual on the Royal Dramatic Theatre’s main stage. On the 10th of November, the puppet will be brought to life again in a performance at Bonniers Konsthall. The only living soul at Bonniers Konsthall is Ylva Ogland’s mirror twin Snöfrid. Let her control your destiny for one night. That’s all you need to know now. Upon arrival you will receive Snöfrid’s manual.
Christodoulos Panayiotou
Christodoulos Panayiotou has produced a series of works for which he acquired historical theatre backdrops that were photographed in their original locations. The backdrops were then removed, folded and placed in a gallery space, with the photographs, as the only remaining originals, installed next to them on the wall. At Bonniers Konsthall, Christodoulos Panayiotou displays a black theatre backdrop, which replaced the original backdrop in a performance in the Bayreuth Opera House. Now the black backdrop lies like a folded memory on the floor, with a framed photograph on the wall above it.
Born in 1978 in Limassol, Cyprus, Christodoulos Panayiotou has participated in several major exhibitions, including at Kunsthalle Zürich, Switzerland (2010); Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, Holland; and the Québec City Biennial, Canada, 2010.
Lili Reynaud-Dewar
Lili Reynaud-Dewar develops stage sets reminiscent of theatrical fables, with references to punk, queer culture, voodoo and African-American rituals. In her works, she plays with various abstract forms that provoke thoughts of carnivals and rituals. In Black Mariah, exhibited at Bonniers Konsthall, Lili Reynaud-Dewar has been inspired by Thomas Edison’s Kinetograph Studio, which, at the end of the 19th century, created the first moving images. The cramped studio was visited by weightlifters, circus performers, famous beauties and vaudeville actors who were immortalised in moving imagery. In Black Mariah, the artist stages a similar session with four eccentrically dressed women.
Born in France, Lili Reynaud-Dewar lives and works in Paris. Selected exhibitions include The Morality Series, Witte de With, Rotterdam, Holland (2010) and Antiteater, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2009).
Pietro Roccasalva
Pietro Roccasalva works with painting, sculpture and performance, which, when brought together, form spatial installations containing metaphysical characteristics. In Scene Shifts, Roccasalva exhibits his painting/installation The Oval Portrait. A Ventriloquist at a Birthday Party in October 1947, a work which changes character over the course of the exhibition. Some viewers will encounter a real tableau vivant with actors in costumes alluding to the old children’s book Der Struwwelpeter (Shaggy-Peter). At other times, the bench on which the actors sit will be empty and the focus will be on the artist’s painting on the wall.
Born in 1970 in Modica, Italy, Pietro Roccasalva lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Selected exhibitions include Johnen Galerie, Berlin (2010); Art Statements, Art 39 Basel, Switzerland (2008); and Making Worlds, 53rd Venice Biennal, Italy (2009).
Kirstine Roepstorff
Kirstine Roepstorff works with collage, often as series focusing on specific topics. In the monumental work Stille Teater, exhibited in Scene Shifts, the artist has transferred the images from the two-dimensional world of collage to the three-dimensional world of the stage. Stille Teater is a mechanical theatre without actors. A dialogue between two characters (Space and Image) propels the action forward, whilst mobile panels create an intricate light play. For the exhibition at Bonniers Konsthall, a Swedish version of the dialogue has been recorded by Royal Dramatic Theatre actors Johan Rabaeus and Björn Granath.
Born in 1972 in Copenhagen, Denmark, Kirstine Roepstorff lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Selected exhibitions include Kunstmuseum Basel, Museum fur Gegenwartskunst, Basel, Switzerland (2010); The Inner Sound that Kills the Outer, MUSAC, Leon, Spain (2009); and Artissima 13, Turin, Italy (2006).
Markus Schinwald
In his works, Markus Schinwald studies the body’s movements and gestures. Utilising techniques such as painting, film, performance and sculpture, he explores how props, costumes and prostheses can affect the body’s pattern of movement. At Bonniers Konsthall the artist exhibits three paintings and the video 1st Part Conditional.
Born in 1973 in Salzburg, Austria, Markus Schinwald lives and works in Vienna, Austria, and Los Angeles, USA. His works have been exhibited at several major art institutions, including Kunsthaus, Bregenz, Austria (2009); Kunsthalle Budapest, Hungary (2009); and Migros Museum, Zurich, Switzerland (2008).
Sriwhana Spong
In the exhibition, Sriwhana Spong will screen her video Costume for a Mourner, part of a series about the Russian Ballet in Paris in the 1920s. The dancers in the film wear costumes which the artist recreated from photos and sketches of a costume Henri Matisse designed for a production of the ballet The Song of the Nightingale.
In Scene Shifts, Spong also exhibits four collages comprising dancers from choreographer George Balanchine’s ballets. The collages are all built around the same theme, yet each picture is taken from a different page out of the artist’s own collection of dance books.
Sriwhana Spong was born in 1979 in Auckland, New Zealand, where she lives and works.
Catherine Sullivan
Catherine Sullivan’s film LULU – Or: To What Ends Does the Bourgeoisie Need Despair is based on an affair between the film star Louise Brooks and the British theatre critic Kenneth Tynan. Tynan created the erotic musical Oh! Calcutta! and in her film, Catherine Sullivan layers footage from the original version, the 1971 television version and from Brooks’ film Pandora’s Box from 1929. Sullivan also stages the climax of Pandora’s Box, where Brooks’ character Lulu is murdered by Jack the Ripper. Here, Jack is played by Kenneth Tynan, whilst an aging Louise Brooks plays Lulu.
Catherine Sullivan was born in 1968 in Los Angeles, USA, where she lives and works.
