Éva Mag / THERE IS A PLAN FOR THIS
22 apr14 jun 2020
Bonniers Konsthall proudly presents There is a Plan for This, Swedish artist Éva Mag’s most extensive solo exhibition to date. Born in 1979 in Transylvania, Romania, Mag follows a tradition of artists interested in the body as a bearer of narratives and experiences. Her work examines issues of vulnerability and strength: how do you stand up straight in the world and, having stood up, how do you remain standing throughout life?
At Bonniers Konsthall, Mag pushes her artistic boundaries by taking over the entire art space with material that is new to her. The work, There is a Plan for This (2020), consists of an enormous amount of objects spread throughout the exhibition galleries, including everything from mortuary freezers to old chairs, broken canoes and motor parts. There is often someone at work in the exhibition, sometimes even the artist herself, organizing and re-organizing the objects. The material is borrowed from her father’s property outside Stockholm and this collection of objects is the result of his many years of amassing unwanted things that others have discarded. If the work originated from Mag’s need to tidy up, it quickly transformed into something completely different. Rather than merely cleaning up, Mag’s object sorting at Bonniers Konsthall instead is a loving act of caretaking.
The exhibition also includes the new video work DEAD MATTER MOVES (2020), a recording of the performance piece with the same title filmed over the course of one week at the Performa
19 biennial in New York. Based initially on Mag’s instructions, this film shows selections of the work and choreography as performed by ten dancers. During the performance, each dancer works with a human figure made of clay as an investigation of collective labor and the challenges a person may have to face in life: alone or together.
