NOWS: House by Dan Stockholm

NOWs:

Fascinated by places and architecture with an innate historical significance and narrative tension, Dan Stockholm practises a “creative archaeology”, which includes field research and work with finds. Recently, his works have been evolving from a “performative process” which turns the finished piece into a container bearing the history of ist making within. At Künstlerhaus Bethanien Stockholm is showing several processgenerated works. The installation HOUSE, for example, was originally begun in 2013 only days after his father’s death, when the artist in a three-day performative action methodically touched his father’s entire house on the outside centimetre by centimetre. This process ended by Stockholm translating this process into object form by producing a large number of negative plaster casts of his handprints. At the Künstlerhaus, he has mounted these on ceiling-height, metal scaffolding poles and in doing so created a spatial installation that exudes a curious enchantment, inviting visitors to move through it as if in a forest. On the ground floor, a video is shown documenting the touching of the house.

Another sculpture / installation by Stockholm consists of reddish bricks that the artist made by hand – which is also the title of the work. He used 12 of the handprints produced for HOUSE as tools for these, pressing them into the damp clay, so that a positive imprint was created in each brick. Afterwards, the bricks were dried out and have been arranged by Stockholm within the exhibition space into a “palpated architecture” and therefore into a new (narrative) structure. On the upper floor of the exhibition space there is another piece by Stockholm, a floor sculpture entitled Level (Blue Mare, Königsblau); in this case, the artist leaves it to the visitors to discover, touch and develop/complete the work.

For Dan Stockholm, the act of ‘touching’ has become a fundamental part of his working process. The works shown at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien each stand alone, but they are also part of a wider, processual context – a never-ending cycle of ideas and stories, to which we do not gain access directly through contemplation of the work, but via retrospective activation of the narratives inherent in them.

Dan Stockholm is a grantee at Künstlerhaus Bethanien by selection of The Danish Arts Foundation.

Please be welcome to contact the artist if you are interested in a studio visit there until 1 July 2016. Contact: Dan Stockholm: hello@danstockholm.com