STANDARD (OSLO)  -  EXHIBITION ARCHIVE
GROUP / "START KAPITAL" / 14.04.-22.05.2005 /
14.04.-22.05.2005
Opening: Thursday 14 April 2005/ 19.00-22.00
Live Performance: Cory Arcangel – Sunday 22 May 2005/ 14.00

STANDARD (OSLO) is pleased to announce the opening exhibition of its new gallery space in Hegdehaugsveien 3. “START KAPITAL” brings together contributions by seven artists, reflecting upon the initiation of the gallery and the conditions of commerce in late modern capitalism. Starting up a new gallery space, we found it natural to talk about the possible endpoint: bankruptcy.

After five years in prison and eight years of isolation in his attic, former bank director John Gabriel Borkman returns reduced to a ghost. Henrik Ibsen’s play John Gabriel Borkman deals with the shame, withdrawal after an embezzlement leading to near bankruptcy. Borkman’s constant revisiting of facts is an attempt at prove himself innocent, but involves a further distancing from the world. Contemplating its own point of departure STANDARD (OSLO) starts by situating “START KAPITAL” back to an initial meeting with the space: that of a meager shop. This meeting not only took place within an empty interior, but also within one revealing traces of failed entrepreneurship. Hegdehaugsveien 3 – having formerly been a dairy, a fishmonger and a clothing shop – dates back to 1937 and is one of the most significant structures designed by the Norwegian architect Knut Knutsen (1903-1969). His particular mediation between the universal language of Modernist architecture and an adherence to local site is suggested through the idiosyncratic line of the façade, the rhythmic break up of lines and cogent addition of volumes – which provides the natural conditions for the gallery space.

Knutsen’s balancing of the particular against the universal – as a deviance from the standard – finds an affinity to the works within “START KAPITAL”, which equally measure claim (authority) and withdrawal (intimacy). Anselm Reyle is concerned with the processes of painting, as he is equally with the transformation to sculpture in his untitled painting. An encased, large scale black canvas is encausted with a thin silver foil relief - originally material for emergency blankets. Michaela Meise’s sculptural object evokes an interest in the minimal remains found in the interiors of closed down Berlin shops - sharing a sense of muteness with the still life drawings by Kim Hiorthøy. Hans-Peter Feldmann’s Fensterputzerin counterbalances these drawings with references to the grid implicit to late Modernism, but lending rationalism with intimacy in the elegant voyeuristic study of a woman cleaning the windows. A similar juxtaposition of the poetic and late modern design rhetoric is laid out in Martin Boyce’s We Have Become the Air Now, where a black T-shirt hangs on the limb of a bold red steel structure.

Boyce’s allusions to the eerie still life of a shop window display recall Karl Marx’ claim that: ”At first glance, a commodity seems a commonplace sort of thing, one easily understood. Analysis shows, however, that it is a very queer thing indeed, full of metaphysical subtleties and theological whimsies”. This confusion is made more extreme in Matias Faldbakken’s work, a 16-page broadsheet newspaper, where the content and design is produced by the artist – willingly diffusing the border between objectivity and interpretation. Freely distributed, it fails in the act of ‘transubstantiation’ – what Marx defined as the process of transformation of commodity to money. Cory Arcangel and Frankie Martin update this category of non-productive exchange at the attempt of putting together a dating service in the video work “414-3-RAVE-95”. By employing the early software of MacDraw, Arcangel and Martin exercise the futility of spectacle while quoting the pioneering tools of small-scale enterprises in design and desktop publishing.

START KAPITAL includes works by: Cory Arcangel/ Frankie Martin, Martin Boyce, Matias Faldbakken, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Kim Hiorthøy, Michaela Meise and Anselm Reyle. For further information see enclosed artists’ bios or contact director Eivind Furnesvik at eivind@standardart.no / +47 917 07 429.

Next exhibition: Ane Graff "My Days Are Consumed Like Smoke" - 02.06.-03.07.2005


STANDARD (OSLO)
Oslo, 7 April 2005




CORY ARCANGEL AND FRANKIE MARTIN
"414-3-RAVE-95"
2004

DVD/ single channel projection
04:00



CORY ARCANGEL AND FRANKIE MARTIN
"414-3-RAVE-95"
2004

DVD/ single channel projection
04:00



ANSELM REYLE
"UNTITLED"
2005

Mixed media on canvas, in acrylic box frame
234 x 199 x 40 cm
Installation view



ANSELM REYLE
"UNTITLED"
2005

Mixed media on canvas, in acrylic box frame
234 x 199 x 40 cm
Installation view

MICHAELA MEISE
UNTITLED
2003

Wood core plywood, synthetic resin lacquer
171,5 x 40 x 40 cm



KIM HIORTHØY
"UNTITLED #69"
2004

Mixed media on cardboard, framed
35 x 44,5 cm


MARTIN BOYCE
"WE HAVE BECOME THE AIR NOW"
2004

Powder coated steel and T-shirt
250x150x150 cm


MATIAS FALDBAKKEN
"SEE YOU ON THE FRONT PAGE OF THE LAST NEWSPAPER THOSE MOTHERFUCKERS EVER PRINT"
2005

Edition of 2000 free newspapers
Black and white print, 16 pages, broadsheet format



KIM HIORTHØY
"UNTITLED #69"
2004

Mixed media on cardboard, framed
35 x 44,5 cm
Detail view



MATIAS FALDBAKKEN
"SEE YOU ON THE FRONT PAGE OF THE LAST NEWSPAPER THOSE MOTHERFUCKERS EVER PRINT"
2005

Edition of 2000 free newspapers
Black and white print, 16 pages, broadsheet format
Installation view



MATIAS FALDBAKKEN
"SEE YOU ON THE FRONT PAGE OF THE LAST NEWSPAPER THOSE MOTHERFUCKERS EVER PRINT"
2005

Edition of 2000 free newspapers
Black and white print, 16 pages, broadsheet format
Detail view



HANS-PETER FELDMANN
"FENSTERPUTZERIN"
1972

32 black and white photographs (89x12,5cm) on 16 cardboard pages (20x32,5) and 1 handwritten title page in portfolio
Detail view



KIM HIORTHØY
"UNTITLED #2"
2005

Graphite on paper, framed
40 x 32 cm



KIM HIORTHØY
"UNTITLED #3"
2005

Graphite on paper, framed
40 x 32 cm




KIM HIORTHØY
"UNTITLED #5"
2005

Graphite on paper, framed
40 x 32 cm