Exhibition View of "Foreign Object Debris"
X Museum present "Foreign Object Debris", the Norwegian-German artist Yngve Holen’s first solo show in Asia. The exhibition brings together more than 30 new works from Yngve Holen’s extended practices that are grounded in his decade-long explorations of industrial manufacturing, contemporary food productions, and commercial airliners.
Exhibition View of "Foreign Object Debris"
Yngve Holen, Anthroposophic SUV, 2021, photo Stefan Korte, Courtesy the artist, Galerie Neu, Berlin, Modern Art, London, Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt a.M.
In the aviation industry, Foreign Object Debris (FOD) indicates the objects found in an inappropriate location and could potentially cause damage due to being in that location. Dislocation becomes more disruptive in this sense than other inherent qualities of an object; FOD then turns into a fluid concept—the familiar objects are spontaneously rendered foreign when separated from their designated context and location in the machinery system. In the exhibition ‘Foreign Object Debris’, machinery parts are extracted and revamped into biomimetic debris that starts to reveal their organic or even human-like presence. If not seeing man and machine from a dualistic point of view, Yngve Holen’s works highlight the overlapping realm between the two. Drawing from disassembled industrial parts, works in this exhibition constantly skip between man-machine complex and body-mind paradoxes, and in turn, lay matrices for human and technology symbiosis.
Exhibition View of "Foreign Object Debris"
Yngve Holen, Heart, 2021, photo Stefan Korte, Courtesy the artist, Galerie Neu, Berlin, Modern Art, London, Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt a.M.
Body as the primary subject to Yngve Holen’s sculptural works, be it absent or present, often looms out through the metamorphosis from organs to industrial parts, poultries to debris, figures to humanoids, and flesh to ornaments. The age of mass digitalisation grants us the convenience of quick data access and process, allowing Holen’s metamorphosis—the makings of ghost-in-the-machine, to unfold in multiple different ways. Central to the techniques that Holen adopts are 3D scanning and printing. Outlining a contemporary dilemma of image representations: the two-fold treatment turns the form of an object into collections of data without reservation of its materiality, but instead enables the filling of new matters to the previous cavity—reminiscent of the bulldozing and the subsequent construction of a site: the original structure is removed for the replacement of the new—old minds in new bodies.
Yngve Holen, FOD, 2021, photo Stefan Korte, Courtesy the artist, Galerie Neu, Berlin, Modern Art, London, Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt a.M.
Making use of opposite materials ranging from cross-laminated timber and carbon fibre to aluminium honeycomb and Uranium glass, Yngve Holen turns the ground level exhibition space of X Museum into a boundless mix of interior furnishings, readymade objects, and anthropomorphic machinery parts off the production line. Under such arrangements, ‘Foreign Object Debris’ renders a hallucinating landscape where symptoms of repressed desires and attempts of heroic egos converge. Comprised of biomimetic objects: from the flesh patterned carpet, 3D printed cow sculpture, to lotus-shaped blown glass lit by a ring light, ‘Foreign Object Debris’ positions a lens through which we can see how desires of humankind steadily shape and consume industrial designs and productions, or even on the flip side, how technological advancements modify and configure human consumptions.
About the artist
Yngve Holen (b. 1982, Braunschweig), currently lives and works in Berlin and Oslo. He graduated from HfBK Städelschule in Meisterschüler Bildhauerei, and University of Applied Arts Vienna in Architecture. Holen primarily works with sculptures and installations, enlightening the human-machine crisis by delving into a wide range of modern specialised industries, from automotive, food production and robotic science, to plastic surgery and aviation.
Holen is the recipient of the Overbeck Prize (2020), Robert Jacobsen Prize (2017), and ARS VIVA (2014/15). He has held solo exhibitions extensively around the EU, including Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo (2019); Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (2018); Kunsthalle Basel (2016). His works were also included in group exhibitions such as the 9th Berlin Biennale and Take Me (I’m Yours) at The Jewish Museum (2016).
About the exhibition
Dates: 2021.9.5—2021.12.5
Venue: X Museum
Exhibition View of "Particularities"
X Museum presents "Particularities" in Beijing, which is a group exhibition about contemporary, small-scale painting. At a time of increasing scale, expansion and general hypertrophy, this exhibition trains its gaze on painting practices that do the exact opposite. Inevitably considering small-scale painting as an ethical and ecological position, it responds to and builds upon the work of approximately twenty international artists working in the medium of painting today. Subject matter and modes of painting may vary, one thing all of these artists definitely have in common is a tendency toward economy of scale. And although formal modesty is the filament that binds them together, they otherwise remain wholly themselves, radiating like so many irreducible parts of a provisional constellation of contemporary painting.
Alexandra Noel, Go Around Cloud, 2021, Oil and Enamel on Panel, Courtesy the artist and Bodega, New York
Sophie Barber, Kim and Kanye Kiss without Tongues, 2021, Oil on Canvas, X Museum Collection
Lucas Arruda, Untitled (from the Deserto – Modelo series), 2019, Oil on Canvas, X Museum Collection
Tom Allen, Yellow Cross, 2019, Oil on Canvas, X Museum Collection
Elizabeth Peyton, Pierre (Pierre Huyghe), 2011-2012, Oil on Panel, Private Collection
Artists: Tom Allen, Lucas Arruda, Sophie Barber, Gareth Cadwallader, Fergus Feehily, Lewis Hammond, Brook Hsu, Jennifer J. Lee, Paulo Monteiro, Alexandra Noel, Daniel Rios Rodriguez, Paul P., Santiago de Paoli, Elizabeth Peyton, Dana Powell, Eleanor Ray, Louise Sartor, Anna Schachinger, Hayley Tompkins, Yui Yaegashi.
About the curator
Chris Sharp is a writer and independent curator. He co-founded Lulu by X Museum in Mexico City. At the start of 2021, he opened his own Los Angeles-based contemporary art gallery, Chris Sharp Gallery. A selection of recent exhibitions includes ‘Alexandra Barth, Scenography’ ( Chris Sharp Gallery, 2021); ‘Yuji Agematsu & On Kawara, Journalier’ (Lulu by X Museum, 2020).
His writing career includes serving as the news editor of Flash Art International, and a contributing editor at Art Review and Art Agenda, as well as being the author of the book La Cité des châteaux de sable.
About the exhibition
Dates: 2021.9.5—2021.12.5
Venue: X Museum
Courtesy X Museum.
