Nina Canell

(Near Here)

8/2 – 6/4, 2014

Dear Chris and Martin,

I am aware you haven’t had the information at hand to reflect the works in the exhibition in the text so far so I will make an attempt to fill you in below.

As you may have noticed the title is a nod to the fact that our show is coinciding with my exhibition [at Camden Arts Centre] in London. Naturally it’s not a parenthesis in terms of hierarchy of importance but rather along the lines of the pictographic nature of the parenthesis itself…. somewhat withheld but held Dearly, densifying, enclosing etc. The space that is immaterially there, semantically speaking. The space within a space and the(  ). I see the selected works as a concentrate. A thickening. 

There are also things held literally in containers (mostly cables, wires, threads…) enclosed in a block of acrylic, pressed between sheets of glass or pickled in (or behind) water. And some that are unheld – a volume of evaporated salty water once absorbed by a dishcloth.

In its reduced form:

- “Infinite force moving through near infinite littleness” (as Steven Connor wrote)

or

- What is nearness?

or

If cables could be said to be inhabited by some degree of forgetfulness, or at least if we acknowledge that it is a crucial part of their functionality, this would leave no doubt that cables are the opposite of sentimental. The current is only capable of carrying the current. Cable stumps are cross-sections of a vocabulary of interruptions. Ending mid-sentence.

I attach some images below…. you have seen the thick cable floating in a block of acrylic already (Near Here)… other works I am bringing relate to the images below but are most probably not precisely as seen here.

Hope this makes sense!

Nina x 

 

Nina Canell (b. 1979, Växjö, Sweden; lives and works in Berlin). Upcoming and recent solo exhibitions include: Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 2014-2015; Camden Arts Centre, London & BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Newcastle, 2014; Luisa Strina Gallery (two person exhibition), São Paulo, 2013; Stray Warmings, Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis, 2013; Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart (two person exhibition), Berlin, 2012-2013. Selected group exhibitions include: Köln Skulptur 7, Skulpturenpark Köln, 2013; 12 Triennale Kleinsplastik, Fellbach, 2013; 18th Biennale of Sydney Biennale, Sydney, 2012; Intense Proximity: La Triennale, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2012; and Under Destruction, Swiss Institute, New York, 2011.

 

All works courtesy the artist, Konrad Fischer Galerie, Düsseldorf/Berlin, Mother’s Tankstation, Dublin, and Galerie Wien Lukatsch, Berlin.
All photographs by Martin Soto Climent.