Rethinking art and identity through the legacy of Asger Jorn. Anti-Asger exhibition at gallery "Kalnas"

July 15, 2015
Author Echo Gone Wrong

Anti-Asger is a continuous cultural project, initiated by The Jutland Art Academy, connecting artists from Denmark, Sweden and Lithuania. In this project, the participants explore the theme of art and identity based on research on the well-known and important artist Asger Jorn (Denmark) and his contemporaries Ars Group (Lithuania). The exhibition “Anti-Asger” is the result of a two year long ongoing artistic investigation, where the works of Lil Wachmann, Tabita Henriksen, Laila Svensgaard and others are based on research in the Asger Jorn archives in Museum Jorn in Silkeborg, while Marija Griniuk and Tue Brisson Mosich’s project “My Cousin comes back from the war ” is based on parallel research at Museum Jorn and the Lithuanian Art Museum.

Anti-Asger was first exhibited in November 2014 in Ceres in Aarhus in Denmark, at the time of Asger Jorn’s 100-year anniversary.

Artists: Jørgen Michaelsen (DK), Nat Bloch Gregersen (DK), Søren Krag (DK), Laila Svensgaard (DK / SE), Tabita Henriksen (DK), Ulrik Myrtue (DK), Kristian Schrøder (DK), Lil Wachmann (DK), Marija Griniuk (LT / DK), Tue Brisson Mosich (DK), Mykolė Ganusauskaitė (LT).

Speakers: Teresa Østergaard Pedersen, Aarhus University PhD and Lucas Harberkorn, Museum Jorn, Silkeborg.

The exhibition took place from 7th May to 15th June, 2015 at Gallery “Kalnas”, Užupis Art Incubator

Tabita Henriksen, Ulrik Myrtue, The Parallel

Tabita Henriksen, Ulrik Myrtue, The Parallel

Tabita Henriksen, Ulrik Myrtue, The Parallel

Tabita Henriksen, Ulrik Myrtue, The Parallel

The Parallel – Download full text

Mykolė Ganusauskaitė, Landscape I

Mykolė Ganusauskaitė, Landscape I

Mykolė Ganusauskaitė, Landscape II, III

Mykolė Ganusauskaitė, Landscape II, III

Mykolė Ganusauskaitė, Landscape II, III

Mykolė Ganusauskaitė, Landscape II, III

Marija Griniuk, The Anti-Murder Manifesto, performance

Marija Griniuk, The Anti-Murder Manifesto, performance

The Anti-Murder manifesto 

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Laila Svensgaard, And thus we paint the walls with memories we have lived, 2014, Framed pigment print, printed text, 3 drawings

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Laila Svensgaard, And thus we paint the walls with memories we have lived, 2014, Framed pigment print, printed text, 3 drawings

“And thus we paint the walls with memories we have lived” is a piece consisting of 6 elements, 3 ink drawings, a poster with the catalogue text from the auction house Christies and a framed pigment print.

The piece takes its point of departure in a twofold encounter Laila Svensgaard had with a painting by Asger Jorn, a portrait of Gaston Bachelard, at Museum Jorn in the autumn of 2012. The image in the painting and the text in the title each evoked in her two distinctly separate memories from her past. The uncanny experience of this encounter, how a painting could trigger and interconnect two disparate past moments in time and space, was fascinating and curious at the same time.

In the three ink drawings Svensgaard re-draw the painting to re-evoke the memory. Each drawing is different just as revisiting a memory never is the same. She thus points to the ephemeral nature of an experience and the impossibility of threading the same path more than once. Each time a path of memory is visited, a new one is created. The framed pigment print tells the story of the encounter with the painting, but as an image it is inversed and printed as a photographic negative. In this way memory is seen to be the negative imprint of a positive present. Memory is addressed through spacial qualities and it questions the relationship between what we live and what we remember as being merely imprints of each other.

Asger Jorn painted three portraits of Gaston Bachelard. Laila Svensgaard’s three drawings refer to this. On the back of one of Jorn’s paintings he referred to Bachelard as “un homme dans l’espace” – a man in space – probably referring to Bachelard’s seminal book, “The Poetics of Space”. The title And thus we paint the walls with memories we have lived is taken from this book and conjures up notions of how our current present moments are created by past experiences and how in the revisit of lived experience memories are remade.

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Jørgen Michaelsen, The disorder of value

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Jørgen Michaelsen, The disorder of value

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Marija Griniuk, extract from the text “My cousin comes back from the war”

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Marija Griniuk, extract from the text “My cousin comes back from the war”

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Marija Griniuk, extract from the text “My cousin comes back from the war”

Marija Griniuk, Tue Brisson Mostch game prototype, presentation only 17.05

Marija Griniuk, Tue Brisson Mostch game prototype, presentation only 17.05

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Tue Brisson Mosich, “Untitled” or “A computerized book that endlessly rewrites Asger Jorn’s text ‘The Situationists and Automation'”

A computerized book is endlessly rewriting Asger Jorn’s text “The Situationists and Automation”. One of Asger Jorn’s books was modified to fit a miniature computer board inside. The computer is only seen when you open the book. This computer is running a program which rewrites/remixes an English version of Jorn’s text “The Situationists and Automation”. The computer/book is connected to an LCD monitor, on which it continuously outputs nearly infinite variants of said text. It is possible, though extremely unlikely, for the computer to generate an exact copy of the original text.

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Tue Brisson Mosich, “Untitled” or “A computerized book that endlessly rewrites Asger Jorn’s text ‘The Situationists and Automation'”

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Tue Brisson Mosich, “Untitled” or “A computerized book that endlessly rewrites Asger Jorn’s text ‘The Situationists and Automation'”

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Tue Brisson Mosich, “Untitled” or “A computerized book that endlessly rewrites Asger Jorn’s text ‘The Situationists and Automation'”

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Tue Brisson Mosich, “Untitled” or “A computerized book that endlessly rewrites Asger Jorn’s text ‘The Situationists and Automation'”

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Søren Krag, “Oluf Jørgensen”

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Kristian Schrøder, “The Great Sommboddy Within the Omniboss”

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Kristian Schrøder, “The Great Sommboddy Within the Omniboss”

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Lil Wachmann, Decomposition – one way of conversation, video still

Decomposition – one way of conversation is a video of manipulated detail images from Asger Jorn’s famous painting “Stalingrad, le non-lieu où le fou-rire du courage”. The painting was chosen to be part of The Danish Culture Canon in 2006 and is acknowledged as one of Jorn’s most important works.

I agreed with the statement after visiting Museum Jorn in 2012 for the first time,and seeing the orinigal painting installed there. It is difficult not to be affected by the pathos; both because of the physical format of the painting and of the historical references of the title. But after studying Jorn (in connection to Anti-Asger) for two years something happened to me. I had Jorn-nausea.

Silkeborg Museum changed the name of the institution to Museum Jorn in 2010 and with it Jorn has become a national property. Now, that the mentioned painting has gained such importance, how do we actually talk about what we see in it?

When I revisited the painting in spring 2014 I was also handed out a text titled “Statement of the painting” whose author was unknown. Nevertheless, the curator of the museum (red. Lucas Haberkorn) decided to present the text together with the painting.

I wondered, why was there a need for a predetermined analysis of an image. What does it say about the museum, and what do it specifically do to our understanding of Jorn and his practice?

By using the text “Statement of the painting” from Museum Jorn and computer generated effects I question the correct analysis of the painting.

Marija Br

Marija Griniuk, The Opposites