Urban Scene XII: petrol station

Kalmar konstmuseum is proud to present a showing of the latest work by Ninia Sverdrup from her ongoing series, Urban Scene, on which she has been working for several years. Her most recent piece, Urban Scene XII: Petrol Station, is filmed with a fixed camera that captures everyday events at a gas station, an urban space that in itself has the character of a movie set. None of the action is planned, but the images are carefully manipulated and all of the sound has been added later.

Ninia Sverdrup’s work has long dealt with the concept of time. She has worked with a series of issues of time and its relationship to other concepts, such as rationality. Sometimes the artist begins with how “time” works, and its significance in everyday life, as in the expression “to have time for”. One of Sverdrup’s early pieces was Min att göra-lista (My To-Do List), in which she spent an entire day at the post office—from nine in the morning until six in the evening—just to buy three stamps. Sverdrup often makes reference to the Japanese concept of ma, the valuable emptiness in a non-rational way of perceiving time and space. Here time is part of our experience of space, emphasizing the experience of “time” (actually the entire situation) rather than its seconds, minutes, and hours.

In her video-based series, Urban Scene (of which Petrol Station is a part), Sverdrup has searched out “natural scenes” in the urban landscape. Because of the structure of these places, she has some degree of control over the pattern of movement in the scenes, and she concentrates on apparently meaningless details in those movements. She then reworks these entirely commonplace images with great care. But most of her effort focuses on composing the sounds in the scenes. In these pieces, the soundtrack is always entirely constructed afterward.

Ninia Sverdrup (b. 1971) has been living and working in Berlin for the past several years.

Exhibition Opening: January 21, 2:00 PM
Conversation with the Artist: 3:00 PM

For further information:
www.niniasverdrup.com
or please contact:
Martin Schibli, Kalmar konstmuseum’s Director of Exhibitions
0480 426288
martin.schibli@kalmarkonstmuseum.se