THE WORLD IS YOURS

THE WORLD IS YOURS, it says from the roof of the Louisiana’s Old Villa – a light-work by Gardar Eide Einarsson – signalling in large letters that the visitor will be meeting contemporary art that in one way or the other involves the viewer. The artists in THE WORLD IS YOURS are not afraid to communicate – they are from a generation for whom social collectivities as well as the boundaries of such collectivities are a natural part of the themes, language and material of art. This means that the viewer can look forward to more than a mere observer status: some of the works involve the individual visitor, who will have to deploy all his or her senses to navigate through the contemporary art.

The exhibition makes it clear that many of the themes characteristic of social debate can also be identified in what the artists are working with. But as always – even though we stand before something that seems to match our own everyday life – art offers new angles or asks the questions differently. In several of the works in the exhibition something odd is going on in otherwise familiar spaces. A McDonald’s restaurant is flooded and everything is floating (Superflex); a well-ordered supermarket succumbs to systematic, obsessive-compulsive demolition (Aernout Mik); walls emit smells of the sweat of fear from various men (Sissel Tolaas); the viewer is riddled with radio frequencies and now functions as a tuner in a giant radio (Rafael Lozano-Hemmer); or is suddenly in a space cooled down to minus 10 degrees in the company of an ice-covered racing car (Olafur Eliasson). The viewer has to engage with work after work in ways far from the perhaps-distanced observation of a picture on the wall.

This will undoubtedly nuance the widespread view that contemporary art is a particularly inaccessible, navel-contemplating and difficult phenomenon, for the works in the exhibition do not close in upon themselves. There are many ways in and ways out – and Louisiana has followed its inclination to show just that by making the exhibition catalogue an issue of the Louisiana Revy, sent out to among others the more than 35,000 members of the Louisiana Club. Communication is a paramount concern of the museum.

Despite its large format, THE WORLD IS YOURS is a continuation of the exhibition series “Louisiana Contemporary”, which has since 2005 presented solo exhibitions of international contemporary art profiles including Julie Mehretu, Keith Tyson, Candice Breitz and Tal R.

THE WORLD IS YOURS
Contemporary Art
Kurator: Anders Kold

Künstler: Monica Bonvicini, Tom Burr, Mircea Cantor, Gardar Eide Einarsson, Olafur Eliasson, Simon Evans, Cao Fei, Douglas Gordon, Shilpa Gupta, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Elliott Hundley, Emily Jacir, Matthew Day Jackson, Michel Majerus, Corey McCorkle, Aernout Mik, Sebastian Diaz Morales, Simon Dybbroe Moller, Adrian Paci, Pipilotti Rist, Chiharu Shiota, Superflex , Sissel Tolaas