Stalke Out Of Space
Logo for Stalke Out Of Space, 1991
Surf’s Up: The First Ten Years with Stalke Out Of Space
“I’m getting bugged driving up and down the same old strip
I gotta find a new place where the kids are hip.”
— Brian Wilson, I Get Around
A closed stand at one of the leading art fairs, billboards placed around Copenhagen and its suburbs, a traveling exhibition of experimental art made in collaboration with twelve giants of Danish business, exhibitions in the “Spaces of Others” galleries, and next year a transmission from the most isolated gallery in the world — Kambur in Iceland — directly to the cosmopolitan art fair Art Forum in Berlin.
Not exactly conventional gallery activities back in the beginning and middle of the 1990s, when Stalke Out Of Space — and Sam Jedig — probably did not meet the expectations most people had of a gallery owner either. In a picture on the front page of a newspaper from 1993, you see him surfing, hanging loosely from the trapeze with the wind in his hair as if it were the opening sequence of a Danish version of Miami Vice. And in the interviews inside the paper — under the headline “Out of the Gallery Space”— you can read that Sam Jedig mainly deals with art with the intention to “hopefully soon drive around Europe with my surfboard on top of the car and do projects.”
But what use are conventions and expectations when we are talking about art — and especially the art of a decade still present in our minds? Is the most important function and quality of art not to break down conventions that are so ingrained we no longer notice them, to challenge our expectations, and to expand our horizons in order to explore new territory in both a literal and metaphorical sense? And if that is how art works, why shouldn’t the gallery do the same?
This has been the line of thought from day one at Stalke Out Of Space, when Sam Jedig & Co. started to show and produce projects with mainly the up-and-coming generation of Danish artists. During its first ten years, Stalke Out Of Space has made its mark as both experimental and ambitious — do not mistake that! An alternative to the type of gallery that had ruled the scene since the 1950s, based on the philosophy that art equaled money.
From project to project, the core and source of energy for Stalke Out Of Space has been a shared wish to make something outside the public highway — or at least outside Bredgade (the street where most of the fine art galleries in Copenhagen are located). A place where you could not necessarily touch the bottom but felt you had hit the wave at its most potent peak — the happening place.
This spirit has given Stalke Out Of Space both conceptual and practical spaciousness and mobility that other galleries either envy or fear. There have been clear hits, sensational scandals, and a few strikes — not all projects have been realized — but first and foremost Stalke Out Of Space has shown a unique insistence on trying to redefine the dos and don’ts of the gallery. Instead of becoming satisfied and settling down, it has continued to seek out new places and spaces, always with the surfboard on top of the car.
Such Were the ’90s
In 1991, when Stalke Out Of Space launched its first project, the Copenhagen art scene experienced the beginning of a general shift concerning both gallery activities and artistic tendencies. The “Young Wild Ones” of the 1980s were no longer that young — or that wild. Most of them were represented by established institutions and galleries that guaranteed frequent shows and steady income. The underground art scene was, in other words, ready to be taken over by the next generation.
This generation, which had its natural origin in the environment around the Academy of Art in Copenhagen, showed no interest in creating beautiful — or deliberately ugly — commercial objects. Instead, they turned toward an investigation of the relationship between art and surrounding society with all its richly faceted cultural expressions, technological possibilities, personal stories, and social power structures.
This new orientation stemmed from a genuine wish to get out of the tight jacket of modernism — aka the “white cube” — breathe fresh air, and find new, more up-to-date spaces in tune with their artistic practices and ways of communication. A widespread anti-institutional and, to some extent, anti-aesthetic attitude was notable among artists of this generation. Traditional media such as painting and sculpture were rejected in favor of video art, snapshot photography, performance, installation, and various events. If painting or sculpture was used, it was in the spirit that art belonged nowhere and everywhere — except in traditional galleries.
Principally and practically, this meant artistic expression had no limits; it might take place on a square in the middle of the city, in an African village, in a coffee shop, in a private apartment, or in the basement of a hip concert hall.
At the same time, the gallery market was becoming exhausted after the exuberant 1980s, when prices skyrocketed and spread a gold-fever atmosphere in the art world. Many people had become extremely rich — artists as well as gallery owners — but just as many had to close down. Out of this tight but stimulating situation (in the aforementioned interviews Sam Jedig is quoted as saying, “The crisis is good, because it cleanses.”) arose a number of more or less alternative gallery projects in the 1990s.
These projects broke with the traditional gallery structure where the gallery owner was in charge and economically responsible while artists were represented. Many were temporary galleries initiated and run by artists themselves, with simple means and an invincible will to be independent and create suitable contexts for their work. The galleries (if that is an appropriate term) were located in worn-down houses where the rent was cheap and the man on the street would not stop by unless he knew art was being exhibited.
Public interest was therefore restricted to an inner circle of friends, colleagues, and a few initiated critics — and this was probably just as well, because artists were allowed to exhibit as they wished: unpretentiously, energetically, and experimentally.
Making and showing art were no longer two separate things. The two activities became increasingly integrated, sharing the objective of expanding the borders of both the gallery and artistic practice. The exhibition context, once a conserving and sanctioning institution, was now regarded as an opportunity — a creative potential — that could contribute something positive and expand its field beyond clinical cubes.
Among initiatives connected in spirit with Stalke Out Of Space were Baghuset, Globe, Udstillingstedet, Max Mundus, Saga Basement, Xart, North, Kvinde på Værtshus, and Kørners Kontor. The gallery project closest to Stalke Out Of Space was probably OTTO — a group and exhibition space whose fundamental idea was never to have a permanent address, but instead to move around and exhibit in all sorts of spaces.
The Teenage Years Lie Ahead
That Stalke Out Of Space has maintained this level of initiative and willpower for a decade is an achievement in itself. At the same time, they have challenged the limits of what a gallery is and created a useful and inclusive platform for the manifold artistic expressions of the 1990s.
The world changes, art changes, and the art world changes. Rather than ending on a retrospective and nostalgic note, we might consider where they will go surfing in the future. The internet seems an obvious territory to explore. The geographically and communicatively limitless nature of the medium is closely related to the nature of Stalke Out Of Space. And hey — people surf on the internet!
Two concrete projects should be mentioned: a two-person show with Albert Mertz and Lawrence Weiner at Kambur Gallery in Iceland, and a transmission from another show at Kambur directly to a big international art fair.
Organisation- and ambition-wise, these are among the most extensive projects in the history of Stalke Out Of Space, and they clearly capture what the gallery stands for: art historical consciousness, quality, presence at the center of events, and at the same time far out of space — insisting on not being engulfed by the system.
Stalke Out Of Space has proven in its first ten years that this is possible — and the teenage years lie ahead. Not exactly a time of boredom or fear of trying new things.
Jacob Lillemose, 2001
Stalke Out Of Space
Stalke Out Of is a unique construction on the Danish art scene. The concept for Stalke Out Of Space was created as a rupture with the traditional, rigid ways of exhibition represented by galleries — a system art generally has had to submit to.
The concept came into existence as the result of one man’s — Sam Jedig’s — vision, but also as a natural link in a process that fulfilled the demands of the time to change the role of art in society.
A number of tendencies have intersected and amplified each other: Since the breakthrough of modernism in the middle of the 19th century — with Édouard Manet as the leading figure — progressive art has more or less deliberately turned its back on its audience. And to a growing extent it has become an elite art for an elite audience. You do not make art for an “external audience,” but for yourself and each other. However, the loss of its princely employers and its bourgeois audience has made art proletarian. As a consequence, almost no artist in Denmark can make a living from their art alone, at least not art that requires an exhibition. Artists make a living from decoration assignments, teaching, or night jobs at the post office. However, this situation gives the artist a new creative freedom: when he or she cannot sell his or her work and does not have to make a living from it, then there is no reason to make objects intended for sale or to exhibit in a commercial gallery.
In a society of material surplus, where advertising agencies and tourist brochures cultivate beautiful and perfect motifs such as sunsets, splendid landscapes, idyllic nature, and beautiful bodies, such imagery becomes almost reprehensible: it is regarded as picture-postcard-like and slushy. Traditional aesthetics are replaced by a partiality for what was earlier considered ugly and poor — the worn-out and overlooked: an aesthetic of decay. This tendency is amplified by the proletarian status of the artist and, as a consequence, much of the most important progressive art today is created and exhibited in empty warehouses or condemned properties: necessity becomes a virtue.
The de-commercialisation, the new artistic freedom, and the new aesthetics have created new communicative needs different from those in the traditional gallery context, which is why many artists have been left to themselves when it comes to spreading the word about their works.
Bent Petersen
2001