Jacob Dahlgren - Painting into Space and the Meaning of Construction: Stockholm

Andréhn-Schiptjenko is pleased to present Jacob Dahlgren’s second solo show at the gallery. 

Dahlgren constantly seeks geometric and abstract patterns in the surrounding world. He regards himself and his striped t-shirts – that he has worn for the last thirteen years and plans to wear the rest of his life – as a living exhibition. The starting point for the new video work, Neoconcrete Space, is his collection, now consisting of 1027 t-shirts.

In the film Non Object, Dahlgren follows and films people wearing striped shirts without their knowledge. Through filming individuals from the same distance and placing them in the same central location in the image, the artist reduces the person to an abstract motif.

The exhibition also consists of the performance piece Neoconcrete Ballad, a large-scale abstract painting, created on site by different coloured and sized wall plugs. The painting will be created during the length of the exhibition. A few hours every day, people will be hidden behind a wall in the gallery, drilling holes into which they will place plugs. Those drilling the holes decide the final result, but they have to follow certain rules set up by the artist. As a spectator on the other side of the wall, you only see the activity as drills and plugs coming out of the wall, gradually forming a pattern.

Neoconcrete Ballad relates to earlier work such as I, the world, things, life in The Nordic Pavilion exhibition in Venice in 2007, Signes d’abstraction at the mall Gallerian in Stockholm and many others of Dahlgren’s installations where the interplay between time, space and spectators plays an important role for the work.

Dahlgren represented Sweden in the Nordic Pavillion at the Venice Biennale in 2007. Since then his work has been shown in exhibitions world wide, e.g. at the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle (solo show), KIASMA, Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, Turner Contemporary in Margate, UK, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center/MoMA, New York and at Chelsea Art Museum, New York. His work is currently on display at the Kristianstads Konsthall, Kristianstad, and in group shows at KIASMA in Helsinki, Workplace London, Gumbostrand Konst & Form in Söderkulla, Finland and at Nordiska Museet in Stockholm.