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17. marts 2003]
Interview
Pernille Albrethsen
From the observatory
interview with Pernille Albrethsen
Art critic and journalist Pernille Albrethsen (b. 1971)
has just curated her first exhibition: the group show Playschool
at Galleri Christina Wilson. Kopenhagen met her the week
before the opening for a chat about the show and the process of
curating.
Pernille Albrethsen got her MA in Modern Culture from the
University of Copenhagen in 1999, and has been working freelance
as an art critic and writer ever since. She has a monthly ‘best
of the scene’ column in Eurowoman, and writes for quite a
few international art publications, including Flash Art, NU –
The Nordic Art Review, Tate Magazine, Contemporary and Metropolis.
The photographs in this article were taken before the exhibition
installation was finished.
Interview: Kristine Ploug.
Photo: Thyra Hilden and Torben Zenth.
Playschool
Sturlasgade 12H
2300 København S
Tel: 3254 5206
Opening march 14 7-9 pm
March 14 — April 26 2003
Kirstine Roepstorff
and Pernille Albrethsen are watching Kirstines work.
Playschool is a curated exhibition in a commercial gallery.
How did the project begin?
Christina Wilson contacted me last spring and asked
if I would curate an exhibition in her gallery. She has an ambition
that her gallery be seen in the same way as a larger exhibition
space, and wants to have curated exhibitions interspersed with
her other shows.
So, the pieces in the show aren’t for sale?
Some of them are, some aren’t. In the beginning I thought
a lot about what I should do, regarding that, and the fact that
this is a gallery, and not an institution. The first thing I decided
was to avoid the overkill of a ten page long philosophical essay.
But otherwise, the process hasn’t been any different than
any other show, some of the pieces just happen to be for sale.
And this exhibition is something that I have no problem representing,
and could just as well have been in an exhibition hall.
  
Pernille Albrethsen
You’ve gathered together an international group
of artists…
Christina Wilson had actually asked for that specifically,
an international group exhibition, but I probably would have done
that anyway. I knew all the artists. Jakob (Boeskov – ed.),
Kirstine (Roepstorff – ed.) and Stéphane (Calais –
ed.) are all personal acquaintances. Öyvind Fahlström
and Franz West are established art history personalities. Öyvind
Fahlström is dead now, but Franz West is still alive and
is an icon for many young sculptors; for example, I think you
can find his influence in Tal R and John Kørner’s
work. He’s especially well known for having invented a concept
he calls paßtück – which in English would be ‘fitting
piece’. What he meant was a kind of sculpture that can be
used. It’s a comment to the thought of what an object is,
and what it means to the space it’s in. I have one of his
paßtücks in the show. Another thing he’s known
for is his chairs, another comment on the discussion of what is
art and what is furniture. I’m really happy to have the two
sculpture works in the show – they’re real masterpieces.
It lends a certain perspective to a show that is predominantly
contemporary work when you include older pieces.
What is the idea of the exhibition?
Many of the artists I chose have a playful approach to making
art – hence the title Playschool. But sometimes I think,
especially in the context of Danish art, that artists with a playful
approach can easily be labelled frivolous. It seems that an artist
can either be political and serious or frivolous.
Franz West: Goran,
(2001)
Why is that?
We have a heavily expressionistic tradition, something I’m
honestly not that interested in, but which I feel informs the
entire (Danish – ed.) art scene. So, if an artist has a more
emotional or poetic approach to their work, it immediately seems
suspicious. I think that there is a tendency toward artists having
to argue for their art. I want to show that artists can be a little
pop art, while still having a well defined political message.
Take Öyvind Fahlström for example. He’s passed
away, as I said before, but he was the great Scandinavian pop
artist of his time; some of his work is in the style of comic
books, but he was just as likely to do installations using green,
red and orange, where the red referred to the suppression of the
Third World, the green referred to the USA, etc. There are many
political indications in his art, but his practice had at the
same time a playful character, and I find that very appealing.
Kristine Roepstorff, Penille Albrethsen
and Christina Wilson
Does art have to be political?
It’s honestly not because I’m focussed on showing
art that’s super political. But I would like the political
aspect to be there, whether as a nuance of the work, or more straight
forward. Some work that’s labelled political art is very
black and white: ‘that’s the enemy that I’m opposed
to’ – very cut and dried. And what I really want to
show with this exhibition is that you can be political on more
than one front. It’s not really an expression of what’s
happening in the art scene right now. It’s just something
that I think is really cool!
I’ve created a catalogue for the exhibition, in which I refer
to Francis Picabia, one of the big dada-surrealists. A real artist’s
artist. A man that many people respect, because he was always
changing his approach throughout art history. I think he’s
a hit because when you work with art, you have to look deeply
at work and question the sometimes strange, cryptic and poetic
pieces. Sometimes it’s not as easy as how the media would
like it to be, there’s no readily apparent meaning to the
work. I have great respect for the forms of expression that art
employs, and want to help give art room to express what it wants
to, how it wants to.
 
Stéphane Calais: Boxe
Thaï (1999) and working on a wall mural
You’ve focussed on art that is political and has expressed
opinions, but isn’t necessarily all that readily apparent?
There are a few different areas in the exhibition, and a few
different art forms represented. Because I like the fact that
it’s all a little ruffled. I like it a little complex. Some
of the pieces are pretty straightforward and have clear messages,
while others are far more cryptic. For example in Jakob Boeskov’s
work he’s critical of a well known Danish shipping company,
there’s no doubt about who he’s talking about and what
the critique is based on (she laughs). And then there’s Stéphane’s
piece, which is a nice little sculpture with a basketball and
a couple of peacock feathers – he himself says that you can
get a headache trying to figure it out – and when you look
at it I think only a minority of the public will walk away thinking
‘wow, that was a piece packing real political punch!’
 
Karl Holmqvist
What is your curatorial process like? After you’ve established
your concept and chosen your artists, were there specific pieces
you had in mind, or were there new ones created for the exhibition?
It depends. I contacted the artists more or less because I
like their work. With the artists that happened to be dead or
well known (she laughs), I had to take what I could get. And I’ve
been really lucky to get some fantastic pieces.
Everything that Jakob and Kirstine have in the show is new, and
we applied for – and got – money to produce new pieces.
They both made outdoor pieces. Actually, I only asked Kirstine
if she could make something for the elevated walkway outside the
gallery, but Jakob decided that he also wanted to make an outdoor
piece. Kirstine is making a huge banner that says ‘bridge
of sighs’ to hang outside the gallery. Jakob is making a
huge balloon, which will be up on the roof. It’s blue –
a very famous Danish shipping company blue (she laughs) –
and has long bunny ears.
I ran into Eva Rothschild at that fantastic exhibition that was
at Charlottenborg last summer: My Head is On Fire But My Heart
is Full of Love. She’s made three pieces for this show, and
she’ll be at the opening to do what she sweetly calls a ‘site
specific incense piece’! I told her what my idea for the
show was, and she told me which of her pieces she thought would
best fit in.
The artists have all actively taken part in discussing the exhibition.
As I said before, I didn’t want to create theoretical overkill,
but I had an idea of what attitude and atmosphere I wanted to
create, and the exhibition grew out of that. It was Rothschilds
own idea to do her incense piece, and Jakob Boeskov suggested
himself that he should give a talk at the opening.
 
Eva Rothschild:
Hothouse and Eyeyoga
What about the name Playschool – what does that mean?
Playschool is what they call kindergarten in England. Pre-school
– where kids still play, but start learning the alphabet.
That isn’t to say that the artists are a bunch of kids (she
laughs). I also thought about combining ‘play’ and ‘school’
or ‘cool’. That you could be playful and still cool
and collected. And that you can have a professional approach to
your work, even though it’s done with humour.
It’s been your first project as a curator – how
has it been?
It’s been – and still is – really fun! I’ve
learned a lot of exciting stuff. For example what a great idea
it is to make an exhibition. I mean, last year it was just a vague
idea. And then I contacted a few people and talked about it with
them. Sort of: ‘I like what you do – will you play with
me?’ And then a dialogue started and suddenly a lorry driver
calls me from England and says he’s just picked up my art.
And then it develops into a whole room, an exhibition. Suddenly
a gallerist, seven artists and I have created a space together.
It had never dawned on me what a great idea it is to make an exhibition
before now, when I’m actually doing it.
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