Crystal - Current Exhibition

CRYSTAL

Proudly presents

Ditte Ejlerskov

Full Arch

November 11 - December 17, 2011

Opening November 10, 5 p.m. – 8 p.m.

In a new series of paintings on canvas and paper, Ditte Ejlerskov explores the relationship between attraction and madness, ecstasy and performance, sexual control and patriarchal power relations, through studies of the pose “full arch”. A woman standing on her knees with an arched back, her sexual organs exposed. The pose is aimed at the gaze of the viewer and it signals both submission and control. The pose appears throughout art history, in depictions of religious ecstasy, demonic possession and in the pathological term “hysteria” as well as in contemporary popular culture, where female pop stars play with the borders between sexualised power and the objectification of the male gaze on stage and in videos. The fierceness, the staged ecstasy is at the same time is both alluring and a balancing act on the verge of insanity.

In Ditte Ejlerskov’s paintings a complex study appears, where the physical pose and its double implications are repeated until they stand out as a practice of exorcism, a process of expulsion. The repeated act is at the same time the subject used throughout art history as a proof of the function of exorcism and the treatment for “pathological hysteria”. The artist plays with the ideas of what contemporary demons the female pop stars are trying to exorcise with their poses and what is to gain in the staged performance.

Parallel to the studies of the pose there is the sadness and entrapment, in empty beds with messy sheets, women hiding behind closed curtains, couples turned away from each other on opposite sides of a bed. The alienation and loneliness that appears from the complicated balancing act between sexual power and diagnosed madness. The contrast between the woman on the stage and the woman behind the curtains that at a first glance appear steep but at a closer study seems to tell the same story.

In her works Ditte Ejlerskov refers to painting as a medium. She uses various techniques and aesthetic expressions, ranging from skilfully crafted figurative painting to pure studies of colour. She works with a constantly on-going exploration, where intellectual curiosity runs next to art history and popular culture. Together the various references create a subjective narrative, where the describing titles of the paintings contribute in creating a story in the shape of an exhibition. The image material is gathered from Facebook, the artist’s own camera and from art history and popular culture.

Ditte Ejlerskov was born in Fredrikshavn, Denmark in 1982. She lives and works in Malmö and is educated at Malmö Art Academy. Since graduating in 2009 she has had solo exhibitions at Elastic, Malmö, the Museum of Sketches, Lund and Larm Gallery, Copenhagen as well as appearing in group shows at Malmö Art Museum, Ystad Art Museum and Uppsala Art Museum and at several art fairs. Ditte Ejlerskov has received several grants and awards and 2011 she was shortlisted to the Carnegie Art Award for Denmark.

You Must Close the Circle, 2011, oil on canvas, 24 x 33 cm, Ditte Ejlerskov

Crystal prouldy presents new works by Tracy Nakayama. Nakayama works with ink drawings on paper and on canvas, with a colour palette stretching from the deepest of red to the fairest of pink. Her new works are portraits, often of naked bodies dissolving into the landscape that surrounds them, thus erasing the dividing lines between subject and setting. In Nakayama’s new works we meet a charged nature, volcanos and deep waters that can also be seen as metaphors relating to her earlier sexually playful images, whereas the naked bodies now rather express innocence and the simple act of being.

”The nude is timeless, free, vulnerable, empowered, and free from the class slavery that clothes hang upon it. It exists on a level of cosmic consciousness where it’s in the whole universe, infinite space, eternal time, and permanent impermanence.” /Tracy Nakayama, 2011

Tracy Nakayama was born in 1974 in Honolulu, Hawaii. She earned a BFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1996 while studying with Bay Area printmakers Jack Ford, Ken Rignall, and beat poet Michael McClure. She relocated to New York City shortly after where she received her Masters Degree from the School of Visual Arts in 1998. She has exhibited extensively in galleries and museums in the US, Europe, Japan and Scandinavia including PS1 and the Aldrich Museum. Her work is also part of the Judith Rothschild Contemporary Drawing Collection in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. She currently lives in Los Angeles, California.

Welcome to the universe of Alba S. Enström. A world filled to the brim with images, paintings and drawings that together and one by one relates to art, text, movies, music, fashion and back to art again. In oil, acrylic gouache and watercolour, on canvas and on paper a subjective history of images appears, one that differentiates not between high and low. In an expressive style, with subjects borrowed from popular culture, tabloids, the punk movement and contemporary artists, Alba weaves a continuous narrative, at the same time disparate and all including. Cars crash at high speed, sexuality is at the same time tender and pornographic, bondage and human bonds are treated, icons of literature and movie stars are portrayed, aliens stand side by side with rock stars. Painting, as its own universe, is holding the lively, poignant and sprawling world of images together.

An on-going project is Alba’s books, a cross between artist books, journals and sketchbooks, they are exhibitions in their own right. The two covers contain a flow of images and reflections.

”It is a sliding scale where you never know where one thing ends and another begins. I have the impression of teenage pictures, full of naiveté and dreams of love and appreciation. Is not that what we all want? In the midst of this hopefulness a darker side emerges, one distinctly related to the history of art. The pictures appear to be apocalyptic images, at their best reminiscent of William Blake’s celestial pictures. His complex imaginary worldview contains an explicit dichotomy between male/female, self/society, past/pres­ent, mass culture/high culture, triviality/spirituality. Is not this the very complexity of being a human being today?”/ BO NILSSON, 2010

The preview is also the release for the fanzine about Alba, designed by We Do Not Work Alone. The fanzine is the fourth in CRYSTAL’s on-going project with exhibition fanzines.

Alba S. Enström was born 1960 in Stockholm. He is educated at the Royal Art Academy in Copenhagen. Solo exhibitions include Växjö Konsthall, Kalmar Konstmuseum and Staffanstorps Konsthall. Alba has participated in group exhibitions in, among other, Lunds Konsthall, Charlottenborg, Copenhagen and Centre Culturel Suédois, Paris.

The exhibition continues between August 26 to September 24.

Opening Hours: Wednesday – Friday 12 noon – 6 p.m. Saturdays 12 noon – 4 p.m.

CRYSTAL

presenterar stolt:

Leif Holmstrand
Slottsherre klåda ja / Lord of the Castle Itch Yes

Välkommen på vårens sista vernissage torsdag 12 maj, kl. 17-20. Premiär för Making Up
Stories, ett nytt performance av och med Leif Holmstrand kl 18.00. Under kvällen är det även release för den nya katalogen “Catalogue Katalog 720418- 2492 Leif Holmstrand 1997-2010”.

Man har anlagt system. Som språk och kön. Och vi letar i dem. Och jag tänker att du framkastar egna, iscensätter, parodierar. Det är vackert. Det är ensamt och underbart att de omöjligen kan harmoniera. Att systemen påbörjas, föreslås. Som visioner, sorger och katastrofer. Bländande. På en gång glasklara och vidöppna. Jag skulle vilja lova dig att sökandet inte tar slut. /Kristofer Folkhammar utdrag ur ”Man har anlagt system, om och till Leif Holmstrand” ur katalogen.
Leif Holmstrand, född 1972, bor i Malmö och är verksam som konstnär och författare. Tidigare utställningar inkluderar Modernautställningen 2010, Moderna Museet samt grupputställningar på Bonniers konsthall och Malmö konsthall. Han har gett ut ett flertal böcker bla på Albert Bonniers Förlag och Oei editor. Utställningen är Leif Holmstrands andra separatutställning på CRYSTAL.

Utställningen pågår t.o.m. 12 Juni

CRYSTAL

proudly presents:

Leif Holmstrand
Slottsherre klåda ja / Lord of the Castle Itch Yes
Welcome to the last opening of the season, Thursday May 12, 5-8 p.m. During the evening it is the premiere of Making Up Stories, a new performance by and with Leif Holmstrand at 6 p.m. It is also the release of the new catalogue “Catalogue Katalog 720418-2492 Leif Holmstrand 1997-2010”.

Systems have been founded. Like language and gender. And we look through them. And I think that you put out your own, stage them, make parodies. It is beautiful. It is lonely and wonderful that they impossibly can harmonize. That the systems are begun, proposed. Like visions, sorrows and disasters. Blinding. At the same time crystal clear and wide open. I would like to be able to assure you that the seeking doesn’t end. /Kristofer Folkhammar exerpt from ”One has founded systems, about and to Leif Holmstrand” from the catalogue.

Leif Holmstrand, born in 1972 lives in Malmö and works as an artist and a poet. Previous exhibitions include The Moderna Exhibition 2010, Moderna Museet and group exhibitions at Bonniers Konsthall and Malmö Konsthall. He has published many books at among other Albert Bonniers Publishing House and Oei editor. The exhibition is Leif Holmstrands’ second solo exhibition at CRYSTAL.

The exhibition is up until June 12th