P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center presents Norwegian artist Børre Sæthre’s highly aestheticized immersive environment which unfolds throughout the third floor Archive Galleries.
Sæthre’s work engages and alters the immediate surrounding architecture while guiding visitors through fairy-tale imagery and seamless futuristic design. Each room transports the viewer into otherworldly scenarios in which Sæthre’s use of materials divorced from their previous contexts, such as acoustic tiles, and LED lights, function as compositional elements within this totalizing installation. Furtive display devices create glimpses into idiosyncratic worlds inhabited by poised animals, oddly disjoined from the overall décor to create awkward sites for voyeuristic activity. Anachronistically frozen in space, his mythological taxidermy hybrids insinuate elements of surrealism, drawing from an ancient register that collides with futuristic settings. Enigmatic outlines are drawn by the structures of Sæthre’s environments (sculptural and reconstructed interiors, light, and soundscapes), but films and photographic tableaux tend to interject more personal narratives. These are often made optional through various cloaking devices, such as semi-transparent glass panels, long corridors, windows that one may uncomfortably peek through, insinuating the complicity of the viewer.
Viewers will encounter unlikely temporal juxtapositions, as futurisms of the past collide with Surrealistic images drawn from a mythological register.
Børre Sæthre lives and works in Oslo and New York. He has had solo exhibitions including From Someone Who Nearly Died But Survived, Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Norway (2007); I’ve Been Guilty of Hanging Around, Participant Inc, NY (2006); Powered by Zero, Galerie Loevenbruck, Paris (2005); and Module for Mood, Thread Waxing Space, New York, NY (2000). His work has been included in group shows including Nordic, Museum Küppersmühle/Sammlung Hans Grothe, Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Germany (2004); Todos somos pecadores (We are all sinners), Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico (2002); He is currently a resident at Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris.
Børre Sæthre is organized by P.S.1 Curatorial Advisor Lia Gangitano.