An artistic hieroglyph. A musical riddle in a remote and paradisiacal place. Surprises and answers in the penultimate frontier of art. The fluttering of a cheeky low-flying bird is not part of the exhibition program of this circus with many tracks, but the smell of algae in a closed room with sculptures and messages is.
What is happening here (and will happen until October 10) is not an earthquake, nor an ice age in July, nor a coincidence, it is a phenomenon that marks an alternative course for art that has to be brave and ask questions. It already happened in January with the opening of the ΕΜΣΤ and its exhibition on love.
What is happening here (and will happen until October) is not an earthquake, nor an ice age in July, it is a phenomenon that marks an alternative course for art. In a land of extremes and merciless winds. The fallen trees in the forest have become the columns of a Greek temple topped by the rocks of a nearby wall, an agora. Museum rules are shattered in this corner of the world. Hallelujah.
In one of the rooms of the old 19th century architecture gallery, an ingenious video by the Indonesian collective Gudskul (the penultimate cry of world art) shows a blue ball that stops at nothing, knocks over books, overcomes obstacles, lives its adventure, a Free life. Right next to it is a chess board for four players in which to collaborate is to win and to fight is to lose.
Outside, children play with a mound of colored foam that flows from the crack of a red-painted barn. It is a monumental sculpture, thought to the millimeter. there are those who take off their shirts and ink them with the different colors of the foam. In the exhibition hall two operators, hammer in hand, have been petrified. Has Harry Potter passed through here and has he taken a petrificus totalis out of his wand or is there a lack of security measures?
But the most important question that Moss asks himself is: where is art going? What labyrinths does it take to remain authentic, to break the jar of essences and then connect with the public, putting the pieces together? The energy electrocutes the visitor at every step on placid Jeløya, a small island two hours south of Oslo, where the mythical Galleri F15 stands proud.
This is an art center with a lot of tradition and history but local, peripheral, on the outskirts of Moss, a provincial town. In Norway, art is making its way based on an overflowing imagination with names that are not in the emerging books but that are already raising questions.
It is the first time in 25 years and 12 editions that the Momentum Biennial of Contemporary Art -“the Nordic artistic miracle” according to the uber-curator Hans Ulrich Obrist-, breaks the law. Those chosen to program the works are Tenthaus, an international collective of artists based in Oslo (not the usual curators, curators and critics) who choose the participating artists.
Radio, music, poetry, concerts, cooking, contact with nature, bibliographical experiments and a daily nightly karaoke. All artistic festivals should include some of these ingredients. Karaoke, where whoever wants to participate, is run by the members of Gudskul, the Indonesian artistic collective that already caused a sensation at the last Documenta in Kassel. Watch out for Gudskul. Cinnamon stick
Whoever goes to this gallery-farm surrounded by fields of beaches with icy water and trotting horses, has every right in the world to wonder what all this is about, if there is an alternative to canonical art, an alternative that questions and rethinks ideas to the big fairs that have subscribed to franchises around the world.
Yes, it is legitimate to wonder: “Is this art? A karaoke where one can scream with I will survive by Gloria Gaynor? Come on, come on... Collective kitchen? Some beach flip-flops at the entrance of a room? Are they kidding us? The answers are not emphatic, nor definitive, nor imperishable. But the works cause an impact, talking to the artists gives them an aesthetic and philosophical sense.
And you can talk to all of them, under the trees, in the inner galleries, in an old stable over a glass of wine or crossing the path from exhibition space to exhibition space in this small complex between hayfields and next to a beach in which only the heroes of Marvel, DC Comics and very brave humans bathe.
Momentum is not a typical shop window (create-sell-buy), but rather a workshop of originality and vision, which looks to the future of the planet and does not pay lip service. Posturing has no place, glamor is understood in another way, it is born from the exchange of brilliant ideas.
It is an experience that encourages gathering, discussing sensations face to face, exploring (the catchy slogan in English is Together as to gather) and adding all the accents on the planet. There are hardly any artists from the country, both the members of Tenthaus and the chosen artists partly live in Norway, but their origins spread across five continents.
Stephanie Lüning has hands that look like a disjointed rainbow, all the colors she uses for her works, some ephemeral, others permanent. Works that have gone around the world in the form of soap foam sculptures occupy squares and streets, they rise like clouds in the wind and where children dive.
"There is nothing left of the works, only the videos and I see no reason to sell them, the only thing left of each action is each one of the spotted monkeys that I use." She explains it next to his other work that is taking shape as the days go by. A canvas on a platform that gradually becomes more pigmented as cubes of different shades dissolve and leave a circle.
The ices are made of natural essences: herbs, tree bark, forest fruits. Whoever dares to suck them discovers that some taste good and others a thousand demons. Children throw cubes, like someone throwing dice. Momentum is a tower of babel that stands and does not collapse. La lingua franca is a dialogue between nature and experimentation in an old building with the air of Fanny and Alexander de Bergman with gold-embossed wallpaper. Here a chapter of the future of art has begun to be written.
