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press release
- Jakob Kolding
October 26th
- December 14th 2002
Opening Friday October 25th 2002 from 17-19
It is a great pleasure to present an exhibition with Jakob Kolding.
A selection of new collages revolves around different aspects of
town planning and life in the city and in suburbia. Juxtaposing
suburban blocks, images of dj's, hip hoppers, graffiti, Starwars,
computer games, malls, public art works and single-family house
areas, Kolding examines the complex socio-economical and political
conditions of city life.
Kolding's work stems from his own experiences of growing up in a
rigidly planned new town suburb. This type of town planning originates
from a generation of utopian architects from the fifties and sixties.
e.g. Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius. The discrepancy between ideology
and ideals on the one hand and the actual living conditions on the
other hand is in fact a failure of this kind of structural and logical
planning of space. Kolding is interested in how town planning tries
to incorporate various social activities in modelling a future town
(e.g. recreational areas, playgrounds, traffic division) and how
these theoretical approaches are inadequate and cannot take the
actual living conditions into account. Kolding uses statements from
architectural theory that thematize various aspects of town planning
and opposes them to playful and chaotic images and drawings. The
rigid architecture and the prejudice against it, is in his work
dissolved by images of pop cultural activities that merge from suburban
blocks and bring life to them. A town is not static, it is characterized
by the people who inhabit it.
The inhabitants succeed in creating a personal space in the blocks
of conformity. Different socio-cultural aspects create and invade
the space and make it dynamic. Kolding uses images of graffiti,
local football teams, public art works, science fiction movies,
comics, hip hoppers, the malls of consumer culture and computer
games as an illustration of life in suburbia. All these aspects
of city culture constitute social identities and local affiliations.
They function as different approaches to Kolding's work where some
spectators may identify with the subcultural elements while others
focus on the references to modernist art and architecture. His non-hierarchic
representation of high and low is presented in the cut-up sampled
technique that characterizes the collage as a media. Not only do
his very aesthetic and refined collages have a formal affinity with
Russian Constructivism, El Lissitsky, Rodchenko and Bauhaus, they
also resemble the making of the electronic, sampled music of pop
culture.
Jakob Kolding has recently made the cover for the new Saint Etienne
album.
He has exhibited in museums and institutions in North America, Europe
and Asia. This is his second solo exhibition in Galleri Nicolai
Wallner.
We welcome you in the gallery.
Kind regards,
Birgitte Kirkhoff
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