“Rucklaren as a model”
“Fredrik Svensk see art gone to the dogs”
“On the way out on the dance floor collide I with Paris Hilton. She looks up, I look down. We smile and I go on into yet another hedonistic night in the 00-century art scene.”
“this happened almost exactly a year ago. The party was the opening of the Frieze Art Fair in Regent’s Park. The champagne flowed as usual, but all felt intuitively to what some already knew: now was the end near.”
“Titanic-capitalism, which made the international superöverklassen to art’s most influential players was about to be lost, and with it all the degenerate lyxkonst that slowly but surely pushed aside all initiatives to a different art and a different world.”
“Now we drank their corrupting of bubbly for the very last time. And the world that made everything and everyone to minions and double agents would now, with the credit crunch, in the best cases of reform. In the worst case scenario, is displayed to the public view and then burned on the moral förfallets trunk.”
“But klassförtryck and undergångsstämning is hardly something new for our time. It is William Hogarth moral trip report in pictures from the mid-1730s, the rake’s progress (A Rake’s Progress) a proof. Fact is the starting-point for the group exhibition Decadence at Dunkers kulturhus, composed of the new keeper Bengt Adlers.”
“Adler’s have allowed the architect Jonas Lindvall create a sort of pictorial design, making each room into an installation with a shared authorship between Lindvall, Adlers and the respective artist. An explicit attempt to hit into (the wide open) the doors of the white cube’s ideology and replace it with a kind of supposedly decadent a forum for local art.”
“In a plastlackat room, Hogarth engraving of the history of the överklasslyngeln Tom Rakewells sinful way of life. It is both educational and democratic, in particular together with audioguidens rich authoritative voiceover.”
“When a helkaklad badhusinredning frames David The halvtrista the New York variant of the Hogarth series is that Lindvall built further on The work with influences from his other production. A conscious visibility of an artist is often to be seen in the light of previous work?”
“But with an incomprehensible Nam Jun Paik-like tv-sculpture with Ingmar Bergman’s production of Stravinsky’s opera about the Rucklaren, so seems Lindvalls bet as decadent in the worst sense of the word.”
“Jockum nordström’s arkitekturmodell of a modernist institutional building, alludes to the apparently Empty Rakewells death in the madhouse. Gunnar Krantz makes a serietidningsöversättning of the 1700-talsrucklaren to klichébilden of today’s Stureplan. And the three morbid leranimationer of Natalie Djurberg brings to mind when in reality, the people attacked the Jake & Dinos Chapman’s exhibition at Dunkers for a few years ago.”
“Hopefully it is not this experience that makes this exhibition feels more småputtrig than decadent. An impression that is reinforced in the associated blog and the exhibition catalogue.”
“But the exhibition’s biggest problem is its lack of complexity and that it is not something happens in the meeting between the Hogarth original and contemporary interpretations. It will be a well – instead of the aha-experience.”
“the Decadence, however, is something that characterizes the retrospektiven with Ivar Arosenius at the Gothenburg museum of art. This is an artist who illustrated his time with rare self-centeredness. In the 1700s rucklare appear here as one of the modern konstnärsrollens prototypes, even if it is in the case Arosenius is a ironic self-aware förfallsromantik.”
“the Attraction of the Arosenius soft contrasts and drab illustrations, often in dark green and blue, is in how he depicts a local scene he was a part of, until he died in 1909 in hemophilia, 30 years old. He weaves his own face in both naturmystiska fairytale world and in naval battles at the pub and stages a male konstnärsideal who figured everything from the early modernism to the bourgeois art-loving class.”
“After 100 years of ekonomisering, politicisation and professionalisation of the art, is perhaps this autonomous artist role evolved once again an option.”
“Dunkers kulturhus, Helsingborg”
“up To 28 February 2010”
“the Gothenburg museum of art”
“10 January 2010”
