The Polish TV Republica has made a presentation of the exhibition “Odd Nerdrum – Painter of the North”, presenting the exhibition space, details in the paintings and talks by director Piotr Bernatowicz and curator Jon Eirik Lundberg from the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art.
The Critic Magazine recently published a strong review and interpretation of the exhibition “Political Art”, which is created in a partnership between Laesoe Art Hall and Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw. The author, Manick Govinda, states that: “The opening of the exhibition is an exuberant display of optimism against tyranny.”
Jon Eirik Lundberg
The Swedish film director Peter Cohen has written a smear towards the late artist Lars Vilks, who died in a tragic car accident on October 3rd. This is a reply to that text.
The fate of Lars Vilks, being under heavy security protection for 14 years, was a constant embarassment to Sweden. The country is one of the most advanced in the world and portrays itself as a “humanitarian superpower”. Yet a bunch of fanatical lunatics managed to boss around with Sweden over a simple drawing. The country had no idea what to put up with this enemy, and still doesn’t. In forseeable future it will be difficult to treat the legacy of Vilks with normal scientific practice in Sweden due to the security issues.
The head of Sweden’s most prominent museum, Gitte Ørskou, denounced Vilks’ most famous work only a few days after the death of the artist. It is not hard to see that the accusation that the drawing is “based on hateful iconography” is an excuse covering up the real issue, which is security.
Peter Cohen is on a twofold mission. On the one side he wants to divert attention away from these complex problems. On the other he wants to smear the Polish government.
For this purpose he has to invent a complete parallel reality. The Polish government, he claims, has ordered an exhibition from Laesoe Art Hall. This accusation is pointing to the exhibition “Political Art” at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warzaw. 18 works of Vilks are presented there. Why, you might think, would the Polish government purchase the services of the perhaps smallest art institution in the world? According to Peter Cohen beceause the art hall is the base for a right wing extremist network. As something quite unusual, at least historically speaking, this network is engaged in the production of contemporary art.
Alas, the right wing Polish government has found a partner in crime.
In the process of making this story up the film director starts portraying Lars Vilks as a kind of Don Quixote. The satirical figure is, however, also the center of the former mentioned “right wing cult” which has come into existence on Laesoe. Cohen seems to disagree with himself as to the status of Vilks; whether he is comical or dangerous. Unable to make the choice Cohen goes with both at the same time.
Five days before his piece was published Peter Cohen called me. He did not present himself, so I had no idea who I was talking to. He had only two questions: 1) Did the Polish government order the exhibition? 2) “Do you have Facetime on your phone?”
I immediatly thought I was talking to some slightly confused fellow citizen, and answered politely, making sure he had understood what I said.
1) No, the government of that huge Central European country did not order an exhibition from Laesoe Art Hall.
2) Learning that I did have Facetime on my phone Cohen said he would call me back another day and talk about the exhibition.
He never did so. Instead he produced what could serve as the plot for a Scandinavian version of Pirates of the Caribbean. Which is a bit funny, since I actually always thought of the art hall as a pirate ship, a privateer, in that the Art Hall is not funded by the government. Being “hired” by foreign governments makes that story even more entertaining, as the historical pirates were also used by governments in shady operations.
Jon Eirik Lundberg
Læsø Kunsthal samarbejder i år med den største institution for samtidskunst i Polen, U-jazdowski Castle Centre For Contemporary Art. Institutionen er lokaliseret i det svenske barok-slot U-jazdowski fra 1624. Slottet har været ødelagt og genopbygget ad flere omgange, og blev senest destrueret af det kommunistiske regime efter 2. verdenskrig. Det blev genopbygget i sin nuværende i 60’erne som en institution for kunst.
Udstillingen “Political Art” bygger videre på ideerne bag udstillingen “Den politiske kunst” i Læsø Kunsthal 2019, men er udvidet så den omfatter 27 kunstnere fra hele verden. Direktøren for Ujazdowski, Piotr Bernatowic, har i en årrække arbejdet med et program for kunstnere der bliver udgrænset af deres egen samtid. Udstillingen i 2021 er således en syntese af de to projekter. Udstillingen åbner den 27. august og varer til januar 2022. Det er den største visning af nutidig politisk kunst nogensinde.
Laesoe Art Hall is proud to announce a brand new collaboration with the most important institution for contemporary art in Poland, the U-jazdowski Castle Centre For Contemporary Art. The exhibition “Political Art” is the conclusion of the works of a group of people. Piotr Bernatowic, director of U-jazdowski, has for years worked on a concept termed “inner peripheri”; artists who are kept aside by curatotors and institutions in their own time due to conceptions of their “attitudes” or “political views”. The group Passion For Freedom has for more than a decade arranged exhibitions for artists that has been victims of political censorship. And Laesoe Art Hall in 2019 arranged the exhibition “Political art”, and gathered experiences relevant to both approaches. A new exhibition, opening on the 27th of August 2021, draws on all of these projects and experiences. It will be the most wide-spanning exhibition of contemporary political art that has ever been arranged.
