Movements_129_0
Untitled (Movements)
2008 mixed media on paper 27.5 x 40 inches
Round_up_129_0
Untitled (Round Up)
2008 mixed media on paper 27.5 x 40 inches
3sounds_129_0
3 Sounds from 94
2008 mixed media on paper 27.5 x 40 inches
Paradise_129_0
The Final Circle of Paradise
2008 mixed media on paper 27.5 x 40 inches
City2_129_0
City 2
2009 collage on paper 16.5 x 11.75 inches
Lambda01_129_0
Untitled (Barbican)
2008-09 lambda print 55.5 x 86 inches
Jk
Untitled (Plans)
2009
chipboard, wood and paper
14.5 x 78.5 x 59 inches
Kolding09-1_675_450

Memories of the Future

February 19th – March 28th 2009
83 Grand Street

Team is pleased to present an exhibition of new posters, collages, lambda prints and sculptures by the Berlin-based, Danish artist Jakob Kolding. Entitled memories of the future, the exhibition will run from the 19th of February through the 28th of March 2009. Team Gallery is located at 83 Grand Street, between Wooster and Greene, on the ground floor.

Kolding’s collages, which have been exhibited extensively throughout Europe, take as their subject the cultural collisions inadvertently set up by the contemporary city. Kolding’s work celebrates a number of urban cultural, synthetic emanations (hip-hop, graffiti, skateboarding, electronic music), as well as the aesthetics of urban studies. Hybrids of invention and documentation, renderings and diagrams, his work depicts processes and events, historical and futuristic narratives pointing to propositions and effects of urban economics, planning, architecture, ecology, transportation systems, politics, and social relations.

The materials Kolding chooses, often looking like several generations of reproductions and suggesting the possibility of mass-production, give his forms and imagery the clinical quality of propaganda used to advocate public plans. Cut-out texts and photos of individuals foregrounded against post-war, highly-designed institutional buildings, housing and landscapes raise questions – how capable is the built environment of social control and even more importantly, can an ideology be translated into practice? Kolding demonstrates how plans fall flat, pointing out architecture’s and its social initiatives’ possible malevolence and impotence when it comes to influencing art and society. Revealing the physical spaces of Capitalism as both depletive and ineffectual, Kolding not only elaborates Marx’s argument on class struggle but questions the power of Capitalism altogether.

Our obsession with modernity — with speed, technology, with youth and with violence — and our favoritism of the new over the old, has led to the stubborn imposition of maladaptive, albeit idealistic, urban schemes, which thwart social integration and individual expression. Kolding’s urbanscapes are aesthetically attractive but empty economic expedients, illustrative of the profound divisions within society. The inhabitants of Kolding’s collages are alternatively shown observing – isolated – amused – rebelling – frequently stifled in a never-ending game of cultural one-upsmanship, bounded on all sides by the city’s engulfing map.

Jakob Kolding has been exhibiting internationally over the past twelve years. He has had solo shows in London, Geneva, Rome, Berlin, Vienna, Amsterdam, Helsinki, Stockholm and his native Copenhagen. His work has been included in shows at such prestigious venues as the DeAppel Foundation; the South London Gallery; The Rooseum; The Kölnischer Kunstverein; the Palais de Tokyo; and the Louisiana, among many others.  He had a solo exhibition at the Kunstverein in Hamburg, mounted an ambitious solo project at the Frankfurter Kunstverein, and participated in Utopia Station in the 2003 Venice Biennale. This is Kolding’s second solo show at Team.

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« Frieze 2008 Jakob Kolding ART | 40 | BASEL | Art Galleries »
Lambda02_129_0
Untitled (Alice)
2008-09 lambda print 55.5 x 86 inches
Bastards_129_0
Untitled (Don't Let the Bastards Grind You Down)
2008 mixed media on paper 16.5 x 11.75 inches
Untitled_andevil_129_0
Untitled (...and Evil)
2007
lambda print face mounted to plexiglas
55 x 84 inches
edition of two
Stakes_is_high_sml_129_0
Stakes is High
2008 collage on paper 16.5 x 11.75 inches
Jk_whenwasfuture_129_0
When Was the Future?
2008 collage on paper 16.5 x 11.5 inches
Mycity_129_0
Untitled (My City)
2008 mixed media on paper 27.5 x 40 inches