Encroachment

Five students from Malmö (Christian Andersson, Christina Curman, Anna Ekman, Elin K Kromann and Petter Pettersson) have been working with the Modern Museum and its collection since April of this year. They have posed a number of questions concerning the museum: What happens to artworks which are incorporated into the collection? How shall the collection pieces be displayed? What is the museum´s mission in regards to contemporary art?

Christian Andersson examines the museum´s relationship to the spectator and the expectations the specator may have. His work often is characterized by the sense of being seen, and looking back without being detected. He arranged the space in the “Dialogues” (Dialoger) exhibits first room, where some of the museums most central pieces interact: Brancusis “Le nouveau-ne” (The Newborn), Kiki Smiths “Sperm Piece” and Picassos “La Source” (The Well). In this setting Christian comments on the institution and its educational function. The work makes use of form and signifiers which are widely recognized.

Christina Curman concentrates on the conceptual in her work as an artist, often striving to twist our visual perception through the use of humour. For the “Ingrepp project”, she has chosen to guide the viewer on a set tour throughout the exhibition, where at specially designated stations the viewer stands before an artwork and reads from signs which one moves from room to room following the history of art by viewing artworks and reading from signs. Following this tour will surely provide a unique experience in the museum.

Anna Ekman´s work often describes physical space, the body, and its relationship to an intimate and larger environment. In her installation work, she combines together a number of paintings from the museum´s collection. The dating of the works and the artists who created them become of minor importance. Greater significance is placed upon the common existential context of the works, as well as the installation´s ability to open up the museum to the sea that surrounds Skeppsholmen Elin K Kromann works with time in the room – the present “Now”. She presents two installation works which deal with the concepts of the visible and the invisible, the former illustrated by the presence of a window frame and the latter represented by a concealed area within the gallery wall. The action outside the window and behind the wall is simultaneous to the existence of the installations as artworks among other artworks in the museum. In the so-called Portrait Room of the exhibition “Dialogues”, Elin patiently sits as a model before us. Sometimes she is there, sometimes not.

Petter Pettersson often carries out his work in the public sphere where, for example, he makes use of found objects which acquire new meaning by presenting them in an altered context. It is art which is extremely dependant upon the environment in which it is presented. For the “Ingrepp” exhibition, Petter comments on one of the museum´s most widely recognized pieces, “Monogram” (also fondly referred to as “The Goat”) by Robert Rauschenberg.