24 August – 13 October 2019
UKS

EXHIBITION
MIKAEL BRKIC: FIRE AND FORGET

Opening: 23 August 2019, 6pm
Exhibition: 24 August – 13 October 2019
Interview: Read UKS’ interview with Mikael Brkic here

Please join us for the opening of Oslo- and Berlin-based Mikael Brkic’s solo exhibition Fire and Forget on Friday, 23 August between 6–9pm.

Words robbed of power, you are broken fragments,
And, by itself, a thin strip of shadow melts away;
Married to a painting, you will gain entry
When a profound emblem helps you to grasp the hidden.

Franz Julius von dem Knesebeck, Dreiständige Sinnbilder (1643)

The multi-layered practice of Mikael Brkic (b. 1987, NO) takes inspiration from today’s commodity culture, now seemingly at its zenith. In a calculated attempt to appropriate and construe the visual and textual language of advertisement as a means to rebrand historically significant events, the artist lures visitors into a web of facts, fiction, and fallacies.

Fire and Forget is the result of Brkic’s artistic research into the Norwegian missile AGM-119, commonly known as Penguin. The development of the missile started in the 1960s and has—up until today—been the most important military research and development project in Norway since the post-war era, establishing various new technologies and methodologies.

The title of the exhibition refers to the type of missile guidance system used by Penguin, which enables the projectile to reach its target after it has been launched without further instruction. Designed to navigate the Norwegian coastline, the missile pioneered a state-of-the-art infrared seeker named Janus, the Roman god of all beginnings, gates, transitions, past, future, passages, and endings.

Produced specifically for his exhibition at St. Olavs gate 3 and not unlike the missile’s trajectory, Brkic weaves an elusive narrative designed to confuse and deflect an audience’s targeted reading. Like a rebus in which a détournement of the recently renovated Rococo hall at Grand Hotel Oslo, motives of rain and of fog, a bust of Janus, and a life-size missile all point to a void in collective memory. And in this collapsed space of firing and forgetting, the words blikket, du, fanger, ikke, meg (gaze, you, catch, not, me) resonate in ever-changing formations.*

* This arrangement of words is part of the poem Blikket by Jan Erik Vold, first published in 1966. Four years later, this poem featured in an installation at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter by artists Irma Salo Jæger and Sigurd Berge. The installation featured technology used in Penguin.

 

Mikael Brkic’s exhibition is made possible with the kind support from the Arts Council Norway and Billedkunstnernes Vederlagsfond.

 

BIOGRAPHY:
Mikael Brkic (b. 1987, NO) lives and works in Berlin and Oslo. He is a graduate from the Academy of Fine Art in Oslo and has studied at Frankfurt’s Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste, and the Mountain School of Arts in LA. Brkic has presented a number of self-organized exhibitions taking place in temporary and pop-up locations, including Gelber Salon at o.T. Bar, Berlin (2018) and War and Peace at Foreign Press, Berlin (2017). Brkic’s work has also been included in To the Fans / Tü de fäns at the Oslo gallery VI, VII (2015).

 

PRESS:

— Mention in NRK (Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation)
Utstilling om norsk missil, NRK, 19.08.2020

– Review in Kunstkritikk (online journal)
Når alt man ser er pingviner, Kunstkritikk, 02.09.2019

 

RELATED EVENTS:

Artist Talk: Mikael Brkic on Fire and Forget

#17 MINIBAR: Oslo Kulturnatt at UKS

Mikael Brkic: Fire and Forget at UKS

Images from the opening of Mikael Brkic’s exhibition “Fire and Forget”. All photos by Jan Khür

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