2016

Exhibition together with Asako Shiroki at Japanisch-Deutsches Zentrum Berlin

The exhibition Contiguous notes handles languages of abstraction, as a parallel to techniques for handling material. In Contiguous notes the sculptural works of Asako Shiroki will meet with the typographic interest of Liv Strand. One series of graphic prints takes a close-up view on the spaces within letters themselves, diving into text. The near-sighted view suggests for letters to have a surface scored and marked, and for them to imprint the paper they take position on with their substance, as weight. Another series consists of singularly printed typographical text-posters, completed to make the paper direct itself towards all ends, as one sculpture would. Liv Strand has written the texts for the posters to operate along similar lines as how sculptures convey their message. Some three dimensional objects will be on display together with the posters.

Both artists take a close interest in how the sensitivity of the work activate the senses of the viewer.

The assemblage of materials in Asako Shiroki’s installations include strings and glass to complete their sensations. The way the materials are combined make the parts seemingly interchangeable, as they propose to make up their own alphabet with ever-changing possibilities. Asako Shiroki’s art works often makes a seemingly temporary compound where the components fit into a perfect incision. If one end is set loose all the other sections threaten to break free.

Contiguous notes: by repetition, by utterances, by the silence and where each note of the composition of a work is placed.

The exhibition was opened by Sakato Masaru, Stellvertretender Generalsekretär at the Japanisch-Deutsches Zentrum Berlin. Dr. Alexander Hofmann, curator of the Japanische Kunst Museum für Asiatische Kunst, held an introduction to the art works.
Taiko Saito played the marimbaphone.

2015

Soloexhibition at Verkstad konsthall in Norrköping

The exhibition Begränsningens anatomi / The anatomy of confinement show new sculptures in dialogue with earlier works and take interest in how present art works can reflect on complex socio-cultural realities. The visitor becomes a factor activating the pieces in literal and figurative senses. The anatomy of confinement explores the notions ‘nation’ and ‘hen’, a newly popular Swedish third person pronoun un-gendered like one, out of aspects of how boundaries and distinctions made are part of the shaping of under- standing on ones present times.

The three parts of installation Quicksand frontier under-standing is presented for the first occasion in Sweden, the work has earlier been shown in Jerusalem, Copenhagen, Berlin and Oslo. These works engages in the foundations of a nation, that is in demarcation.
The anatomy of confinement suggests that we take into consideration how words and notions shape understanding, even on an everyday level of language. The notions we confess to effect our imagination, in the sense of what we think is possible, as the same time as they establish territories. The structures we live limit the conceivable events. Structures set the frames for the manyfold of difference that still exist.

In the exhibition the interest of delimitations goes further to the newly popular, un-gendered third person pronoun ‘hen’, that can be said to erase the gender distinction in the Swedish language. This is presented in the new work text and in the text-posters.

One sculpture of is built to float on the river Motala Ström that passes the Verkstad exhibition space. The art work is made by plexiglass and mirror the surroundings, it wrench the scenery and obscure the line between art and location. The visitors are asked to hand in suggested titles for the sculpture, and the art work will continue to be vague by having several titles mirroring it.