We are pleased to present a new installation of “In No Particular Order” of Swedish artist Martin Gustavsson. The ongoing series of image constellations has been exhibited in London (2010) and in Gothenburg (2011) and will be now shown in Germany for the first time.

“In No Particular Order” consists of a variety of paintings arranged in a grid along the gallery walls. The continuously expanding project constitutes and defines itself with every exhibition anew, undermining predetermined structures of meaning in a contingent process of coming into being and decay. No exhibition resembles the other. There is no single underlying system of meaning at hand. Following the concept of chance, the combination and hanging of the panels is invented for every context anew, taking into account the architectural specificities of different spaces. In our current exhibition we will show more than 80 paintings, some of which were never exhibited before, forming a new constellation of “In No Particular Order”.

Gustavsson’s process based way of working is strictly anti-hierarchical. His image montages are composed of a multiplicity of paintings that refer to a complex image archive, including art historical, religious as well as pop cultural signifiers. The artist deliberately subverts common hierarchies of genre, motif or style. Almost illusionistic paintings are juxtaposed in sharp contrast with abstract geometric compositions. This inherently fragmented structure of “In No Particular Order” not only refuses the validity of one single, established narration. It also interrogates painting itself, fragmenting the very boundaries of its medium specificity. Gustavsson sabotages painting’s contemplative mode of reception. Shifting focus from the auratic original painting towards the collectivity of images in an installation, “In No Particular Order” provokes the spectator to take on an active mode of reception, bodily and intellectually alike.

GALERIE CRONE
Rudi-Dutschke-Str. 26
10969 Berlin
Germany

Phone: +49-30-2592449-0
Fax: +49-30-2592449-16
polina.stroganova@cronegalerie.de
www.cronegalerie.de

In the exhibition ”In No Particular Order”, Martin Gustavsson carves out a new direction in his art.
A great number of paintings, closely hung together, create a multifaceted system of combinations and reading possibilities. The works merge into a continuum, a simultaneous then and now, with a both urgent presence and elusive absence.

He uses his own artistic history in order to reformulate statements about a Being, a search of his own memory as well as of a collective one. A production of possibilities for a context viewed over time and in several dimensions. The random hanging of the paintings becomes a counter move against the circumstances we call life and the meanings we wish and believe that we can see, and make sense of, in terms of significances. The experiences we gain and exchange in our encounter with his works are a never-ending dialogue without a conclusive answer. Martin Gustavsson invites us to accompany him in his exploration to unfold deeper levels of meaning. The hanging indicates the method: turning and twisting, reversing, inspecting at close range and from a distance, the detailed, the repetitive, the essentially different. And to constantly return to the imagery that reminds us of our vulnerability, the body we revisit, the parts of a body that we see.
Martin Gustavsson is one of Sweden’s most interesting artists, with a powerful integrity and personal iconography. It is with great pleasure that Gothenburg Museum of Art presents one of Sweden’s most prominent contemporary painters for its audience.

Please join us Friday 12th November at 7pm for a conversation and performance with Martin Gustavsson and Ian White

No Order In Particular is an extension, testing and live (re)configuring of the title to (and the works in) Martin Gustavsson's exhibition In No Particular Order. The exhibition consists of a currently unlimited, ongoing series of paintings - wildly diverse stylistically and formally - hung in a random order, canvas-to-canvas, perhaps in such a way as to make content of the process of our production of sense. Which in and of itself, or despite ourselves, never seems to fail. Thus No Order In Particular in which the exhibition is rehung by the artist and Ian White (who are friends) while questions are asked and answered via systems that might be understood as similar.

In No Particular Order
opens at Maria Stenfors on the 12th of October 2010.
13/10-20/11
The exhibition will also be shown at Göteborgs Museum Feb-May 2011.
More info to follow.

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