Knut Åsdam
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Knut Åsdam, Image 21 from the
series: "Psychasthenia 10", 2000-2001
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Knut
Åsdam’s work engages with life in
today’s urban environment, its narratives,
politics, sounds and images. He unveils the
city’s unconscious, its underlying
psychological structures that effect the
individual’s personality.
Although Åsdam’s work is deeply
experiential, his use of the term Psychastenia is
significant to the work. Åsdam uses the term as
main or subtitle for a body of work from 1996 to
the present. The term refers to the dissident
surrealist Roger Caillois’ 1935 essay,
“Mimicry and Legendary Psychastenia,”
in which the author suggests that the phenomenon
of insect camouflage or mimicry should be
compared to a type of schizophrenia characterized
as a “depersonalization by assimilation to
space.” This dynamic understanding of the
boundaries between subjectivity and space is
something Åsdam sees as a cultural background to
his work. This affects his understanding of the
body, subjectivity, gender, sexuality, politics,
and architecture.
This first solo exhibition in New York at Klemens
& Grunert Inc. includes the following three
works:
The video installation Notes Towards a
Dissipation of Desire (2001) combines
photographs, drawings and moving images of
protesters, the police and city architecture. The
audio, a text narrated by the artist, is the main
structuring device. The work deals with the
search for political meaning or political desire
while it hints at the limitations of political
expression and the breakdown of language and a
condition of apathy.
Knut Åsdam, Still from
"Notes Towards a Dissipation of
Desire", 2001
In Cluster Praxis (2000), the second audio-video
installation, the audio is a narrative mix of
voice and ambient soundscapes, dominated by a
poetic monologue that deals with assimilation and
desire dissipating into the city. The projection
shows images of people dancing, colored lights
flaring into the camera, inter-cut with
architectural stills, a city street, music from
passing cars and a building site.
Psychastenia 10 series 2, (2000-2001) is a silent
architectural projection installation with images
of modern and postmodern apartment buildings shot
at night. The images are bleak and induce a sense
of fantasy and delirium while the social
references remain clear.
Knut Åsdam, Still from
"Notes Towards a Dissipation of
Desire", 2001
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An
extensive essay on Åsdam’s work is featured
in the current issue of Grey Room (MIT Press).
The two catalogs, Knut Åsdam, Art Now, Tate
Britain, 2000, and Knut Åsdam: Notes Towards a
Dissipation of Desire, The National Museum of
Contemporary Art, Oslo, and Kunsthaus Glarus,
Glarus, Switzerland, 2001, are available upon
request. The exhibition is supported by the Royal
Norwegian Foreign Ministry and Norway 2005.
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Klemens
& Grunert Inc.
524 West 19th Street New York, NY, 10011
tel: 212.807-9494 fax: 212.807-6594 |
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