Tensta Konsthall 2 exhibits On Kawara in a new space 2.2. at The Port [Second Life].

Tensta Konsthall 2 has a great flow of visitors since the opening in October. Jeff Wall has been seen by at least twenty people and the catalogue has been a great success. With the On Kawara exhibition we expect a to print a catalogue in teh early spring which will also will be distibuted digitially on the net.

For the coming period of time Tensta Konsthall 2 is requesting guests curators. If you have an interest in creating an exhibition in the line of Tensta Konsthall 2 please contact International Festival.

"I love this kind of use of Second Life as a
presentation medium of creative work,
as the sense of space and size in works of
art can be put across to the audience."

AngryBeth Shortbread

For you with skills in Italian check out this edition of DigiMag.

DigiMag

On Kawara opens at Tensta Konsthall 2.2

The series of exhibitions continue with a collection of the Japanese artist On Kawara's work. The curatorial profile is on notions of time and duration when art is experiences through unconventional interfaces.

A new feature concerning the interface elaborated in Second Life is that Tensta Konsthall 2 will not change exhibitions in the established spaces but add spaces starting with On Kawara, which therefore exhibits in Tensta Konsthall 2.2.

On Kawara's work is as homogeneous as it is spectacular in its multiplicity. The date paintings have over the last few years received exceptional reception but his work around time and location is similarly strong in monumental works such as the series of books "One Million Years" (1969) or the vast work based on telegrams and postcards.

There is a large amount of text work on Kawara's work trying to grasping it from a number of perspectives. The understanding of time and the showing of time being central issues. But as often as the work is written about it seems that Kawara is able find a new dimension to work through. Lately he has for example exhibited date painting in Kindergarten and primary school situations of which he has taken photographs that later has been shown in gallery and museum situations.

It was an important decision to start the process of creating an On Kawara exhibition for Tensta Konsthall 2.2. What aspects of time and location, what spatio-temporal coordination, does Second Life and the interface used for Tensta Konsthall 2 offer to Kawara's work. Through the emerging online platform one can speculate about how time and site here is intersected in ways which offers an new "image" of time. More important however for Tensta Konsthall 2 has though been to examoine how Kawara's work will force us to reflect notions of duration in a different way, and how this can give us new models to address and understand the virtual which often, in relation to computer space, has been defined through a technologically based vision. On Kawara's paintings exhibited in Tensta Konsthall 2.2 instead gives a phenomenological perspective on the virtual which can give the virtual is nor reducible to the rise of the digital media which often comes down to a representational way of perceiving space and time. Instead, can we grant the virtual in relation to digital media a constitutive role with respect to the intersubjectrrive sphere, where digital platforms could account for a number of externalist accounts where fully new sets of understandings and uses of digital renderings of time and space could be explored.

For this exhibition a new concept has been established. To allow works to be shown more than one time in the exhibition space. Digital space does not need to restrict itself but a decision has been made to use the capacities of digital technology. In this case it enables us to show the time paintings both as a linear experience but also as an experience of time laid out as a map, or field.

With the exhibition of Jeff Wall's work Tensta Konsthall 2 crossed boundaries of copy right and notions of ownership. With On Kawara's work those frameworks are different and it is with great anticipation we open this exhibition to the public.

Since some time Second Life is a free public platform, which implies that, Tensta Konsthall 2. can be visited by anybody, and everybody at the same time, that have access to a connected computer. What you are about to visit opens a new dimension of public art produced and made visible without any institutional frame. International Festival in collaboration with The Port and Tensta Konsthall welcome you to a world of magic where everything is possible.

The Canadian photographer Jeff Wall opens, today, as the first exhibition in Tenst Konsthall 2 in Second Life. With this exhibition Tensta Konsthall 2 open for an entirely new exhibition interface that gives rise to queions about the aesthetic experience but also questions conventions of copy rights, distribution and owndership in and through new technologies.

Jeff Wall's work has been wide spread since almost a quarter of centure. His work can be summerized an image of the late 20th centure, an ouvre that talks about the collapse of reality as modernity hadd described it. Wall's phographies capture the compliexity of life that occurs as a history seen through his camera, from the early works related to something hidden, to uncanny encounters and left space, to the super glossy images of the 8os, especially Milk, which is also when he starts mounting images in lightboxes. The images of the 90s take a more personal turn and look into the small tragies of daily life, and yes another series of work arrives in the later 90s where on the one hand an interest for classical composition emerges and simultaneuosly a stronger social engagement.
For Tensta Konsthall 2 it was an obvious choice to inaugurate the art space with this exhibition as it speaks about surfaces and illustration/illusion and the manufacturing of reality - Walls images are to a large extent staged - and the art space that you will visit today offers similar reflections.

Tensta Konsthall 2 is perhaps not a art space at all but rather an investigation in notion of copyright, display and ownership. It is therefore important to note that every visitor can rearrange the exhibition as he or she desire, take away or add or produce another exhibition. All the imgaes that you find in Tensta Konsthall 2 is available via images engines on the internet and there is no further manipulation made.
In order to make situations visible within Second Life arrrangements of the size of the images have so far been necessary but further exhibitions will adjust this.

Tensta Konsthall 2 is a project by International Festival, architect Tor Lindstrand and choreographer Mårten Spångberg. We are happy to present to you this first exhibition at The Port in Second Life and welcome you to visit the webpage where we will continually present our current exhibitions.

Download the catalogue here: Jeff Wall Catalogue (12 MB)

Secondlife

The Port