Stalke Out of Space Project #19

Artforum Berlin

Nils Erik Gjerdevik and Frans Jacobi

1997

Project for the Berlin Art Fair by Stalke Kunsthandel

At the Berlin Art Fair 1997, Stalke Kunsthandel presents an exhibition of the two Danish artists Frans Jacobi and Nils Erik Gjerdevik.

For this occasion, Frans Jacobi produces the installation "Room 22," a villa tent, hand-sewn with dyed transparent silk, monochromatic, interior in the same color + soundtrack. The significance of the work is straightforward; the tent indicates impermanence and transit. The tent functions as a metaphor for the nomadic existence that the participants (artists, curators, gallerists) are increasingly led into by the ever more internationalized art scene. Art fairs, in particular, are an expression of the degree of extreme impermanence and transit in which contemporary international art finds itself. Visitors to the fair can enter the tent and, from there, experience the rest of the fair in a colored, slightly psychedelic light - while the person in the tent is staged as a sort of psychedelic camping tourist for the other fair visitors. Besides these social connotations, the work presents itself as a large, colorful, monumental sculpture in the confusing and fragmented landscape of the fair.

Nils Erik Gjerdevik presents, in the same stand, a series of "stripe-paintings" (see catalog), also in a slightly psychedelic color palette. While the meanings in Jacobi's project are large and spatially and socially broad, everything in Gjerdevik’s paintings takes place within the frame. Small and large narratives dissolve into surprising decorative painterly effects; the painting detaches itself from its kitschy art references and creates new poetic hazes of color, color, and more color.

Jacobi and Gjerdevik have, over a number of years, shared a studio in Berlin. Both have exhibited in various contexts in Berlin but never together. It is therefore both logical and necessary to assemble these two artists in one stand at the Berlin Art Fair.