Overview
Exhibition Opening Reception: Saturday, May 11, 6–8pm
Transformer, 1404 P Street NW, Washington, DC 20005
Artist Talk: Wednesday, May 8, 12:30-2pm
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Frances and Armand Auditorium
A discussion led by No Place artist and Terminators curator Karen Nikgol
Partnering with Oslo, Norway based arts collective No Place, Transformer presents Terminators, an exhibition of works in a variety of disciplines by Norwegian artists Jørgen van Eijk, Ole Martin Lund Bø, Donkey and Punch, Sebastian Helling, and Henrik Pask in their first DC exhibition.
Identifying Washington, DC as the “inner core of the United States, where decisions that effect the rest of the world are made,” in considering the exhibition collaboration with Transformer, No Place deemed it essential, both aesthetically and ideologically, to work with artists that have a sense of deconstruction in them. The artists chosen for the Terminators exhibition all explore deconstruction in their artwork: a deconstruction of their own artwork, past events, physical objects in themselves, or their own personality.
I think about something like Terminator and I think that's too hasty to just instantly dismiss that as mindless distraction. That's usually coupled right? That's mindless distraction, but what the contemporary artist is doing in his white room is emancipated? It's emancipated to the circuits of capital. That's where we can finally be together is in the art gallery? That's ridicilous of course when we can fucking watch a metal skeleton come out of flames, which has more aesthetic sublimity to it. Perhaps it speaks to the decentered subject in a more radical way than any busted up toy in an art gallery possibly could."
- John Maus
Inviting open dialogue through visual formats, No Place member and Terminators curator Karen Nikgol states: “Order and deconstruction share an interconnectedness wherein strategies of order can only be comprehended once broken down and analyzed – particularly through aesthetic expression. Our aim is that the sense of deconstruction as presented in an orderly environment will produce an understanding of how strategies of order are built and created. Deconstruction begets termination, or finality. It is in finality that one is able to apply the retrospective view, to look back and understand. The works of all the artists in Terminators deconstruct AND terminate, affording the viewer the benefit of bearing witness to both the process of deconstruction, and the ever-present sense of nostalgia that deconstruction carries with it. In this way, Terminators is not really about deconstruction – it is about the reflection inherent in terminating.”
Dedicated to advancing emergent expression in contemporary visual art, Transformer is honored to have the opportunity to work with No Place in an effort to broaden cultural, political, and artistic discourse through the presentation of the participating artists’ ideas and work. The Terminators Artists are:
Tor Jørgen Van Eijk
Working with film, Van Eijk approaches the reality of video art as he deconstructs structures within film through layered imagery until the work itself terminates all imagery, leaving only frequencies.
Ole Martin Lund Bø
Working in painting and installation, Lund Bø isolates the different aspects of painting, revealing the complex nature of the works while deconstructing them to expose their purest form. Through this deconstruction, Lund Bø terminates the bare level of aesthetics and object fascination.
Donkey and Punch
Artist duo Kaya Gaarder and Linda Lerseth work with performance video, putting themselves in different sets they build and design. By doing this, they terminate their old identities and out themselves in a new context and surrounding.
Sebastian Helling
Working with painting in a strongly expressive manner, Helling’s destructive movements terminate his personality and past – juxtaposing destructive gestures with vibrant colors, simultaneously conveying themes of destruction and happiness.
Henrik Pask
Working with text, installation, and painting, Pask deconstructs these mediums in order to explore the notion of false realties and the way we interpret actuality. In this way, Pask recontextualizes these artistic modes, terminating our traditional view of them, and introduces new ways to perceive these traditional mediums.
EXHIBITION HOURS:
Wednesday-Saturday, 12-6pm and by appointment.
Terminators is Sponsored by:
Special thanks to the Office of Contemporary Art Norway and to the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Washington, DC for their generous support of the Terminators exhibition. Additional thanks to Cultural Tourism DC.
