A sculpture to enter and a spatial design to be surrounded by – this year’s art projects at Wanås Konst invite the viewer in and embrace material experimentation as part of how we work toward new sustainable solutions. The installation Tape Wanås, by industrial design collective Numen/For Use, fills a 50-meter (165-foot) barn and reaches outside. Danish artist Peter Linde Busk presents his first outdoor sculpture after having worked on materials and techniques for almost two years in an effort to create sustainable alternatives for the new artwork. In addition, Wanås Konst is putting a special focus on the collection in the sculpture park, emphasizing Anne Thulin’s façade painting created in 1994, as well as Yoko Ono’s Skyladder and text-based work Imagine Peace. The exhibitions are opening Saturday, May 7.
Art Projects Drive Change and Material Development
This year’s major art projects highlight artists that drive change and material development. Rather than raise our awareness about issues of the environment and sustainability as motifs, Danish artist Peter Linde Busk and design group Numen/For Use search for sustainable alternatives in the making of their work. Wanås Konst presents Peter Linde Busk’s first outdoor sculpture. It’s a work with an outside and an inside, the shape is inspired by a pumpkin and the rituals associated with Halloween. The magical and fantastical interested Linde Busk, but in his version, the pumpkin becomes a white sculpture titled Solaris, 4 meters (13 feet) in diameter, that can be viewed as a sculpture or a space to be entered. The newly produced work is shown along with an exhibition of his paintings, reliefs, prints, sculptures and collage from 2015 on, giving insight into his multifaceted oeuvre.
In this year’s art project, the artists seek sustainable alternatives in the manifestations of their work; they test, retry, and experiment. New materials lead to new questions, but it is a basic part of examining alternatives and the result of not being satisfied with the status quo. -Artistic Director Elisabeth Millqvist
Material development is a central element of Linde Busk’s practice and using varying processes and media along with the desire to constantly learn new things are the driving forces when he approaches new artworks. For almost two years, he has produced recipes, materials, and techniques to make the large-scale sculpture in pulp, an effort combined with ever-present artistic questions. He has rejected traditional materials such as bronze and the typical substitutions, fiberglass, or epoxy materials such as resin, as these ages poorly and present all the environmental problems of plastic. The intricate surface of the sculpture is recognizable from his other artworks; he often blends figuration with the abstract, and frequently we see one or several characters in the center of a detailed, ornate background. Parts of previous works and leftover materials are often reused, finding their way into new artworks as parts of a relief or fantastic mosaics composed of unique pieces in a perpetually ongoing cycle.
Numen/For Use is an industrial design collective established by Nikola Radeljkovic, Sven Jonke, and Christoph Katzler in 1998. The group has actively worked to erase the barriers between design, architecture, and scenography, and describe their work as a playground for testing ideas in relation to various tasks. At the request of a choreographer, they created an installation of tape that documented and related to dancers’ movements in 2008. Since then, they have continued experimenting with tape, rope, and nets in elaborate forms and spatial constellations. The site-specific installation Tape Wanås, at Wanås Konst, was not constructed digitally in advance but was created on site in an analog and a physical process. The sprawling tape lines in the barn from the 1700s, show different stages of the undertaking. One part of the installation forms a tunnel to crawl through, and another place features an opening to look up through. The installation examines the old, cathedral-like building as it continues through the space and outward through an open hatch, and affixed to tree branches outside, creates a portal that can be walked beneath. Visitors are invited in the cavities of the hovering large structure, which opens for discoveries for both mind and body.
Parallel to a fascination with the possibilities of the material, the group began working to find a sustainable replacement for conventional tape, and over a ten-year period, they have been investigating the production of alternatives. Step by step, and in close dialogue with a manufacturer, they have developed a biodegradable version of tape. The installation at Wanås Konst, is the second one created with this new material. The first was at the Garage Museum in Moscow in 2019 as a part of the exhibition The Coming World: Ecology as the New Politics 2030-2100.
Exhibitions: Peter Linde Busk and Numen/For Use
Exhibition Period: May 7 – September 4, 2022. (Linde Busk’s outdoor work will also be on view during the fall 2022 season.)
Opening: May 7, 10am – 5pm. Opening ceremony 1pm by museum directors Mattias Givell and Elisabeth Millqvist.
About the artists:
Peter Linde Busk (b. 1973, Copenhagen) was trained at the Slade School of Fine Art, London; Hunter College of Art, New York; Royal Art Academy, London, and the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Previously based in Berlin, he moved his studio to Denmark in 2018. There, he was awarded The New Carlsberg Art Award in 2020. In 2021, he had an artist residency in Pietrasanta in Italy. In Sweden, he has previously exhibited at Borås Art Museum in 2017.
Numen/For Use is a group of industrial designers who began working in Croatia in the 1990s. Today, it is based in Vienna and Zagreb and consists of Sven Jonke, Christioph Katzler and Nikola Radeljkovic. At the turn of the millennium, the members began working experimentally with theater and choreography, and over time, they began exhibiting intricate installations of rope and tape that visitors can participate in physically by entering and climbing on them. Some of their many artistic projects include Palais de Tokyo (2014) and the architecture biennale in Venice the same year. In Sweden, an installation was shown at Färgfabriken, Stockholm, 2012, and in 2013, they did a project for Open Art Örebro. numen.eu
Joanna Kotze was born in South Africa and is based in Brooklyn, NY, where she has been a part of the dance scene since 1998. Her new evening-length dance performance, ‘lectric Eye, and her short film, Nothing’s Changed Except for Everything, premiered in February. Her choreography has been presented at New York Live Arts, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Danspace Project, The Space at Irondale, The Wexner Center, National Arts Centre Ottawa, Velocity Dance Center, The Yard, Bates Dance Festival, Jacob’s Pillow, American Dance Institute, and Movement Research at the Judson Church, among others. joannakotze.com
