2012/02/01
Per-Oskar Leu at Triple Canopy, New York
Still from Fritz Lang's Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (1933)
OCA ANNOUNCES
'CRISIS AND CRITIQUE'
A VIDEO AND AUDIO-SCULPTURAL INSTALLATION BY PER-OSKAR LEU AT
TRIPLE CANOPY, NEW YORK, NY, USA
Exhibition Dates: 10-19 February 2012
Opening Reception: Friday 10 February, 19:00
canopycanopycanopy.com
Per-Oskar Leu has been invited by Triple Canopy to hold the solo exhibition 'Crisis and Critique' from 10 to 19 February 2012. In this video and audio-sculptural installation, the artist takes as his point of departure the German playwright Bertolt Brechtʼs appearance in 1947 before the United States House of Representatives Un-American Activities Committee. According to Triple Canopy, Leu is using Brecht’s plays, screenplays, films and signature leather jacket as touchstones in order to 'orchestrate a theatrical presentation of archival recordings and audio-sculptural objects’. The centerpiece of the installation is a new video edited by Leu, weaving together German films of the 1930s and 40s that dramatise the trial format, including Fritz Lang’s M (1931) and Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, 1933); Brecht’s Kuhle Wampe, oder: Wem gehört die Welt? (Kuhle Wampe or Who Owns the World?, 1932); Hangmen Also Die! (1943) and the film adaptation of his Die Dreigroschenoper (Threepenny Opera, 1931). In combining archival recordings of the 1947 testimony with excerpts from period films and using the current moment in America’s history as a Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt (distancing effect), the exhibition 'considers the distance between historical truths and fiction and asks: What role can or should the artist play during watershed political moments?’
OCA Support
Per-Oskar Leu's solo exhibitions at Triple Canopy
has been supported by OCA's International
Support Programme.
About the artist
Per-Oskar Leu (b.1980 in Oslo, Norway, lives and works in Oslo)
graduated from the Städelschule, Frankfurt, Germany, in 2009. He
has recently presented solo projects at Dortmund Bodega, Oslo; 1/9
Unosunove, Rome, Italy; Vanish, Frankfurt; and Johan Berggren
Gallery, Malmö, Sweden. His work has been included in exhibitions
at the Malmö Konstmuseum, Malmö; Entree, Bergen, Norway; Centro per
l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato, Italy and SWG3, Glasgow,
Scotland. Leu has also contributed to LISTE Performance Project,
Basel, Switzerland and Frieze Projects, London, UK.
About Triple Canopy
Triple Canopy is a
non-profit organisation functioning as an online magazine,
workspace, and platform for editorial and curatorial activities.
Working collaboratively with writers, artists, and researchers,
Triple Canopy facilitates projects that engage the Internet's
specific characteristics as a public forum and as a medium, one
with its own evolving practices of reading and viewing, economies
of attention, and modes of interaction. In doing so, Triple Canopy
is charting an expanded field of publication, drawing on the
history of print culture while acting as a hub for the exploration
of emerging forms and the public spaces constituted around
them.
Read The New York Times review here.