This year’s Momentum in Moss, the seventh in the sequence, is approaching. The current biennial is curated by Erlend Hammer and Power Ekroth.
Unlike previous years, the exhibition is strictly divided into Hammer’s and Ekroth’s respective halves, and accordingly has two names: Dare 2 Love Yourself is Hammer’s exhibition, separate both spatially and conceptually from Ekroth’s, Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast. The 28 participating artists come from thirteen different countries.
“The only thing that can be said to link all the artists in my part of the exhibition is that they all work with an extremely strong consciousness of form. I don’t have any great interest in Actionism or purely ‘conceptual’ projects. If things don’t look good it doesn’t matter how good the idea was,” Hammer says to Kunstkritikk about what characterizes his selection of artists.
Ekroth for her part emphasizes that many of the artists she has on her list work with complex narrative structures.
“They’re strong individuals that I’ve either followed from a distance or worked with before, artists who aren’t afraid of the big gestures, who’re committed to their own time and have created art that has challenged me intellectually and visually,” says Ekroth, who has named her exhibition with a quotation from Lewis Carroll´s Through the Looking Glass. She continues:
“Several works have something else about them that forces the viewer to think for himself or herself. The one that perhaps conveys this most simply is Johan Zetterquist’s Proposals, a series of pieces he has been working on for about ten years. Zetterquist has produced new works in the series for Momentum. One thing we’re working to get into place, Proposal No 12 A Monument Expressing Our European Gratitude Towards the United States of America for Hosting the Puritans, consists of a stunt-man driving a car in mid-air over the canal once a week during the exhibition period.”
Erlend Hammer thinks it would be unfair to single out a small minority of the fourteen artists who are to show works in Dare 2 Love Yourself.
“But that said, you can safely look forward to the paintings of both Bjarne Melgaard and Lars Monrad Vaage. There are five new paintings from Melgaard and six new ones from Vaage, and they’re all among the strongest things they’ve done. Victor Lind’s project too will consist of a formally very powerful work – not that this will be at the expense of the general thematic continuity of his oeuvre,” Hammer clarifies.
Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast, curated by Power Ekroth:
Sergei Bugaev Africa (Russia)
Loulou Cherinet (Sweden/Ethiopia)
Jan Christensen (Norway)
Cevdet Erek (Turkey)
Bjørn-Kowalski Hansen (Norway)
Goran Hassanpour (Sweden/Kurdistan)
Laura Horelli (Finland)
Stine-Marie Jacobsen (Denmark)
Hassan Khan (Egypt)
Gabriel Lester (Netherlands)
Lisi Raskin (USA)
Johan Zetterquist (Sweden)
Clemens von Wedemeyer (Germany)
Dare 2 Love Yourself, curated by Erlend Hammer:
Matthew Antezzo (USA)
Per Christian Brown (Norway)
Paolo Chiasera (Italy)
Ane Graff (Norway)
Mai Hofstad Gunnes (Norway)
Knut Henrik Henriksen (Norway)
Ane Mette Hol (Norway)
Victor Lind (Norway)
Jared Madere (USA)
Bjarne Melgaard (Norway)
Sex Tags (Norway)
Eve K. Tremblay (Canada)
Lars Monrad Vaage (Norway)
Charlotte Wankel (Norway)
Sverre Wyller (Norway)
The exhibition opens at Momentum Kunsthall in Moss on 22 June and runs until 29 September.
