12 June – 23 August 2020
UKS

EXHIBITION
ELI MARIA LUNDGAARD: A HOME FOR OCCUPANTS

Opening: Friday, 12 June, 7pm
Exhibition: 13 June – 23 August 2020
Interview: Read UKS’ interview with Eli Maria Lundgaard here

Pivoting motives of invasive species and barbarism, animism and amoebae, throughout recent years Norwegian, Malmö-based artist Eli Maria Lundgaard (b. 1989, Trondheim) has developed an eerie, cinematic language using simple, deep-hued close-ups of nature in Scandinavia combined with performing hands and a punctuated narration voiced in a soft alto.

For her solo show at UKS, Lundgaard turns the institution’s storefront windows into a shiny and mirrored surface with eye-shaped peep holes, inviting rays of light and occasional goggling by passersby to penetrate the reflexive veneer, into her exhibition—or, in more metaphorical terms, inviting “outsiders” to cut through their self-observation in the storefront mirrors to instead enter and occupy Lundgaard’s odd, unknown “inside” landscape.

Inside UKS, populating the entire venue, around 1000 tiny ceramic pieces crawl across the dimmed spaces. Some glazed, some matte black, the tiny clods are homespun, carrying the rough imprint of the artist’s fingers, as if constructing their own, odd alphabet—a physical sign language or a system of corporeal codes.

The clusters of migrating ceramic entities surround a new video by Lundgaard that gives its name to the exhibition: A Home for Occupants. With a soundtrack that loops a humming chorus of thoughts on the body and its inherent state of transformation and decay, the film’s idiomatic words lap at the porous outlines of dominant verbal and visual language. Slippery, saturated sentences ponder circles of decline and growth: human microbiota, germs, and parasites. We see a snake slowly devouring a mouse or palms, painted blue, taking fern leaves apart, piece by piece.

 

*Exhibition Opening:

To help prevent the spread of Covid-19, UKS is following the current advice from the Norwegian government and Institute of Public Health allowing a maximum of 50 people at an event at the same time and securing a distance of 1 meter between each person/group.

To assure this, we’ll rotate visitors through the exhibition through a special queueing system, allowing a maximum of 10 people inside the exhibition at a time, while having a larger capacity in our backyard where UKS’ MINIBAR will serve post-viewing beverages.

 

BIOGRAPHY:
Eli Maria Lundgaard has recently been shown at the Future Generation Art Prize exhibition in Pinchuk Art Centre in Kiev and in Venice (both 2019); the Moscow International Biennale for Young Art (2016 and 2018); and the onboard program at the Antarctic Biennale (2017). Recent exhibitions include the duo show The Skin is a Layer Which You Can Peel Off at BABEL Visningsrom for Kunst, Trondheim (2018). Lundgaard currently lives and works in Malmö. She is a graduate from the Malmö Art Academy and holds a BFA from Bergen Academy of Art and Design.

 

PRESS:

— Review in Subjekt (online journal)
Burde gått dypere inn i egen tematikk
, Subjekt, 02.07.2020

— Review in Klassekampen (newspaper)
Den glupske naturen, Klassekampen, 12.08.2020

 

Image: Eli Maria Lundgaard: A Home for Occupants at UKS. Photo by Vegard Kleven.

Images from the opening of Eli Maria Lundgaard’s solo exhibition at UKS. All photos by Jan Khür

Eli Maria Lundgaard, “A Home for Occupants” at UKS. Photos by Vegard Kleven

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