GARDAR EIDE EINARSSON

STANDARD (OSLO)

PRESS RELEASE

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GARDAR EIDE EINARSSON

"MAYBE IT'S THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM. COULD BE THE CALM, THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM."

17.08.2022-24.09.2022 / PREVIEW: WEDNESDAY 17.08.2022 / 19.00-21.00

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STANDARD (OSLO) is proud to present a solo exhibition with the Tokyo-based artist Gardar Eide Einarsson. Entitled, "Maybe it's the calm before the storm. Could be the calm, the calm before the storm.", the exhibition brings together a group of new paintings, prints and sculptures.

I.)

A shift of location. A shift of function. On a building site, a brick equals construction. Once removed from such a site, a brick might end up equallling destruction instead. No longer subject to the patience of building brick by brick, but rather subject to the impatience of tearing down exhibited. The 558 "Throwing Brick Premium High Res Photos" that can be found when searching Getty Images follow the same pattern. Herds of young men standing opposite of police in riot gear. Bricks in hand. Bricks scattered across the ground. From students clashing with police in India, to G8 protesters in Edinburgh, to riots in Hong Kong; the photos all render the same moment as the masked protester is flinging his body forward, arm cocked back, still holding onto the brick that in less than a second will leave his hand. The same biomechanic. The same act of disobeience. The same smashed terracotta topograpy of discontent left behind.

II.)

"Perhaps one day we will be able to call those our Arcs of Triumph". The structures scattered across the streets of the Central district in Hong Kong rely on the simplest of construction principles: two bricks standing up with one brick resting on top. Making up a miniature monument and making up a miniature obstacle. The pro-democracy protesters of Hong Kong put them in place to slow down the process of advancing police officers with their armoured vehicles and water cannons. When struck by a wheel, the top part of the would fall down at the back of the other two, functioning as a buttress. Or obstructing even more if cemented to the ground. The factual resistance from something that comes across as a clumsy souvenir copy of Stonehenge.

III.)

The modest white monochromatic paintings, just ever so slightly larger than your average white sheet of paper. Just slightly larger than those sheets of white paper held up by protesters in Hong Kong, voicing nothing but a void statement. The paradox of not saying anything still is saying enough to have you arrested. What is said, what is not said, what could have been said, all merge into one impossibility.

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Gardar Eide Einarsson (born 1976, Oslo) lives and works in Tokyo, Japan. He received his education from National Academy of Fine Art in Bergen, Norway, Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main, Germany; Whitney ISP, New York, and Cooper Union School of Architecture, New York. His works have been exhibitied extensively in Europe and North America, including solo exhibitions at Fridericianum, Kassel; Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt am Main; Centre de Contemporain, Geneva; Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen; Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm; Reykjavik Art Museum, Reykjavik, Iceland; Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, St. Louis, USA; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, Texas, USA; and The Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Norway. As well as numerous exhibitions with fellow galleries Maureen Paley, London; Rat Hole Gallery, Tokyo; and Nils Stærk, Copenhagen. The latter will open a solo exhibition with Einarsson two days after this exhibition opens, with the two exhibitions entering in dialogue with each other.

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Prior to the preview of Gardar Eide Einarsson's exhibition, the gallery will be hosting a talk and book launch on the occasion of the publication of Ina Blom's most recent book: Houses to Die In - And Other Essays on Art (Sternberg Press, London):

"The undead of contemporary painting, avant-garde populism, photography courting stupidity, fraught networking, synthetic atmospheres, displaced abstractions, and the mediation of pain: these are among the subjects treated in this collection of essays by art historian and critic Ina Blom. Written over the past twenty years and drawing on Blom's familiarity with the contemporary art scene as well as the archives of twentieth-century avant-garde art, these texts share a pull towards artistic projects that are not redemptive or exemplary but that rather convey a sense of-often unheroic-trouble. Leaning into ambivalence as a methodology of criticism, Blom takes a particular interest in the detours, doubts, and difficulties that run alongside avant-garde art's more constructively hopeful desires for transformative innovation and change."

Location: STANDARD (OSLO), entrance from courtyard gallery
Time: Wednesday 17.08.2022 / 18.00-19.00

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Installation photography: Vegard Kleven