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3, 2, 1 FIGHT!

“…it is perhaps the case too that the desire is not merely to mimic but, magically, to be brute, primitive, instinctive, and therefore innocent. One might then be a person for whom the contest is not mere self-destructive play but life itself; and the world, not in spectacular and irrevocable decline, but new, fresh, vital, terrifying and exhilarating by turns, a place of wonders”. (On Boxing, Joyce Carol Oates, 1987)

3, 2, 1 FIGHT! is a sculptural installation, an audio visual performance, a violent, voyeuristic spectacle and an exercise in strength, agility and stamina all at once. It celebrates the attack, domination and animal panic, it worships struggle and attempts to force you into complete submission using only its hands and body – a modern day mythopoeic metaphor for a fight to the death. It is in love with mastery, physical prowess and mutual respect. It demands attention, needs you to listen and work those sharp reflexes. It wants to choke you until you tap out.

Each Friday there will be a live action event where another brave fighter is invited to enter the hexagon with the artist. The rules are simple, strikes are allowed to the body but not to the head, a fighter may be submitted through joint locks and chokes to the side of the neck, however, eye poking, small joint manipulation and windpipe techniques are forbidden. Members of the public who are interested in participating through an open challenge, please contact New Shelter Plan for more information.

Louise Lindvall is an artist based in Stockholm, she works primarily with performance and in her practice one can meet a wide variety of expressions such as contemporary pole dance, storytelling, modern dance, large scale sculptural installations and self-produced video games. For 3, 2, 1, FIGHT! she will create a site specific work, and incorporate her modest proficiency in Mixed Martial Arts into a performative installation with live action events happening throughout the period of the exhibition.

Triple bookrelease

Sveinn Fannar Jóhannsson
In his two latest publications, Jóhannsson relocates from Los Angeles to Cologne, from exterior to interior. Portraits by Waiters contains images of the artist posing in front of his own camera in different rooms, on different occasions. When reading the photos one will follow his private daily life and may soon notice that he appears as bored, isolated and eager at the same time. In his exploration of photography as a means of documentation and the contemporary use and status of the medium, Jóhannsson has created a visual diary of himself.

Some Los Angeles Apartments is a remake of the original book by the American artist Ed Ruscha, published in 1965. In Jóhannsson’s version, which is as deprived of people as the original, Ruscha’s apparent lack of artistic skill, and his challenge of what it means to be an artist, is taken a step further: The young artist has – in a classic avant-garde spirit – not made any pictures himself. In this way his book is composed as an extension of Ruscha’s own words regarding his publications as readymade collections.

Jóhannsson’s book has recently been included in the exhibition titled Ed Ruscha – Books & Co. at The Gagosian Gallery NYC as well as at the Museum Brandhorst in Munich. Supported by NOFOFO.

Winter
Conversation Books are hip. Herbert Pundik and Martin Krasnik etc. Winter is such, a conversation book. A conversation in pictures between the photographer Fryd Frydendahl and illustrator and artist Halfdan Pisket, born respectively in 1984 in Hvide Sande on the Danish west coast and 1985 in Copenhagen, Amager. She grew up in a thriving family, surrounded by sand dunes and the sea as the closest neighbor, he in a divided family in the metropolis. And it shows in the choice of subjects throughout the book. Where they are talking from.

But the dreams of doing something other than what was in the cards, is the same. There is the same energy, the same will and the same courage to go all the way. But when nothing is a foregone conclusion, one only has his own doubts to align himself with. If it works. That’s the tricky part. Is it good enough. And that is what Winter is examining – the repetitive act of being thrown back into one self, every time you have moved forward, the mind slush. It sets for a gloomy foundation to start from zero. But there is also a freedom in being without inheritance. To choose your own expression, your own mythology, in short: to fantasize.

And besides the courage, the willpower and the energy there is honesty. To be uncompromised and true and tell it like it is. Bjørn Rasmussen and Christina Hagen has written the introductory texts and Asbjørn Skou has written the postscript.

NewSsshhelterPlan

NewSsshhelterplan is a site specific group exhibition that inaugurates the new non-profit exhibition space New Shelter Plan. The advisory board has curated the opening exhibition that intends to invite audiences to explore the exhibition space and perhaps question the conventions of a traditional gallery setting. The exhibition is conceived as a generous and experimental presentation of the exhibition space, where the focus is on space as well as the dialogue between the space and the individual works.

The artist names are intentionally kept secret until the end of the exhibition. With this we try to provoke the audience to look even closer at the actual work in stead of focusing on what they already know.

The exhibition is, as a whole, conceived as an artistic approach to the space and will involve the floors, walls and doors, underscoring that New Shelter Plan is intended as an experimental and innovative space for contemporary art. The 185 m2 exhibition space is not the usual white cube as we know it from the gallery world, but an old storage room at Carlberg with columns and an elevator shaft at the center of the room.

Sponsors: Carlsberg, Stark, Ege tæpper, Københavns Listefabrik, Rubin Stuk & Søn