Catalogue

Published in conjunction with the exhibition Hall of Mirrors in March 2013 at Archizoom in Lausanne. Foreword by Cyril Veillon. Texts by Marie Theres Stauffer and Caroline Dionne.  Graphic Design Atelier Poisson. Distributed by Ideabooks. ISNB 972-8399-1198-6

Tele2 Arena

Selected to make a sketch proposal for an art concept for new stadium Tele2 Arena in Stockholm. Produced by Stockholm Konst in collaboration with Stockholm Globe Arena Fastigheter

Public lecture

May 25 at Moderna Dansteatern. Part of the course Aspectivity - The History of Seeing and Representation at Royal Institute of Art Stockholm.

HEIMsuchung. Kunstmuseum Bonn

Group Exhibition. HEIMsuching- Unsafe Spaces in Contemporary Art. Kunstmuseum Bonn. May 9 - August 25

List of artists: Horst Ademeit, Eija Liisa Ahtila, John Bock, Gregory Crewdson, Jonas Dahlberg, Thomas Demand, Martine Feipel & Jean Bechamel, Johannes Gehrke, Christian Haake, Stephan Huber, Susanne Kutter, Chris Larson, Jennifer & Kevin McCoy, Stephan Mörsch, Hans op de Beeck, Alexandra Ranner, Reynolds Reynolds & Patrick Jolley, Michael Rohde, Monika Sosnowska, Andrea Zittel. Curated by Stephan Berg and Volker Adolphs

Campus Entrance to Royal Institute of Technology

Selected to make an art/architecture concept proposal for the Campus and the entrance to the Campus of Royal Institute of Technology. Produced by The Swedish National Public Art Council in collaboration with KTH (Royal institute of Technology) and Akademiska Hus.

Konstmuseum Norr

Exhibition and new production. In progress. To be completed end 2013.

Produced in collaboration with Konstmuseum Norr, Kiruna.

Hall of Mirrors. Göteborgs Konsthall

Solo Exhibition. November 2, 2012 - January 6, 2013

Göteborg Konsthall, Götaplatsen, Göteborg

Video works

Shadow Room  

2011. Single channel installation. HD video. Black and white. Silent. Duration 10:31 min (continuous loop). Projection dimension ~ 4 x 3 meters.

In Shadow Room the camera pans back and forth inside a room, recalling the movement of a surveillance camera. With each successive round, the room fills with tree shadows until the room is completely immersed, and obscured, by shadows of nature. The film references Vampire (1932) by Carl Theodor Dreyer and Nostalghia (1983) by Andrei Tarkovsky.

View Through a Park  

2009. Single channel installation. HD video. Color. Silent. Duration 16:58 min (continuous loop). Projection dimension ~ 4 x 2,25 meters.

In View Through a Park the viewer follows a single camera movement from the interior of one apartment, through an idyllic city park, to its facing apartment. Set at night, the dreamlike shot travels endlessly between these two buildings, transforming from a non-physical journey for the viewer through the park - to a furtive, intruding gaze within the private spaces. The work was made by filming in a large constructed set design model of Gramercy Park - the only remaining private park on Manhattan in New York.  Contrary to its appearance, and paradoxical in terms of the history of filmmaking, View Through a Park is in fact a film in color, depicting a setting that is black and white.

Three Rooms

2008. Three channel installation. HD video. Black and white. Silent. Duration 26:58 min loop. Dimensions 46 Inch LCD monitors.

Three Rooms shows three archetypical domestic environments, that during the course of each film, dissolve leaving only a series of bare spaces. Objects which are thin disappear gradually. Other thicker objects whose mass is unevenly distributed involve a process of falling over and breaking before they, too, disappear.

The environments were constructed in paraffin to make the detailed models of each room. When placed into a heated solvent solution, the paraffin melted like ice in warm water, changing the environments from a solid to a liquid form.

Invisible Cities   

2004. Single channel installation. HD Video. Color. Silent. Duration 47:22 min (continuous loop). Projection dimension minimum 4,5 x 3,4 meter.

In addition to the video installation the work contain also dia slide installation with the title Invisible Cities: Location Studies (dimensions variable) and a wallpaper with the title All Invisible Cities in the World (dimensions 14 x 2,5 meter).

Invisible Cities depicts a slow, almost weightless flight through what seems to be a deserted city where the only thing that reminds us of some life, are birds flying next to the central square. The sky is clear as the camera passes different archetypical aspects of any small northern European city: private housing blocks, high rises, industrial areas, shopping streets and a railway station leading to a central square.

The work took its conceptual starting point in reflecting that while we often speak of mega-cities that grow and generate new conditions and problems for urban living.  Sometimes, we talk of rural areas and their depopulation, their insufficient or excessive funding. But we rarely talk of the in-between cities. The ones that exist without much change and where a large part of the world's population lives.

In the film, the viewer is guided through one of these Invisible Cities. The Swedish bright summer night transforms the fully functioning city into a ghost town, as the filming of Invisible Cities was done in the middle of the night, when residents were sleeping.

An artist book with an essay by Göran Dahlberg was produced in conjunction with a solo exhibition at FRAC Bourgogne in 2006. The book is distributed by les presses du réel.

The work is produced with the help from Konstnärsnämnden - the Swedish Arts Grants Committee & Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Weightless Space   

2004. Single channel installation. Video. Color. Silent. Duration 22:10 min (continuous loop). Projection dimension ~ 4 x 3 meters.

In Weightless Space the viewer follows a potted plant and errant bubbles while they float around, seemingly weightless and unaffected by gravity.  The only light source in the drab 1970s room comes from the slightly opened door.  To make the work, the scene was filmed by placing the room inside of an aquarium filled with glycerol.  The aquarium was then fixed to a gyroscope that when rotated created the weightless effect.

One-Way Street  

2002. Single channel installation. Video. Black and white. Silent. Duration 3:48 min (continuous loop). Projection dimensions minimum 4 x 3 meters.

In One-way Street the camera moves in an even pace on a deserted night-time city street that has glass buildings and street lamps whose lights are reflected on the wet asphalt. As the forward motion continues down the street, new building blocks persistently appear from the darker far end of the street.

The film was shot in a 9-meter long architectural model.  In order for this seemingly endless forward movement to occur without revealing a track upon which a camera would customarily be placed for a tracking shot, the model was designed and built so that the curbs of the sidewalks would serve as a track that supports a small wooden wagon with an engine.

One-Way Street  

2002. Single channel installation. Video. Black and white. Silent. Duration 3:48 min (continuous loop). Projection dimensions minimum 4 x 3 meters.

In One-way Street the camera moves in an even pace on a deserted night-time city street that has glass buildings and street lamps whose lights are reflected on the wet asphalt. As the forward motion continues down the street, new building blocks persistently appear from the darker far end of the street.

The film was shot in a 9-meter long architectural model.  In order for this seemingly endless forward movement to occur without revealing a track upon which a camera would customarily be placed for a tracking shot, the model was designed and built so that the curbs of the sidewalks would serve as a track that supports a small wooden wagon with an engine.

Untitled (Horizontal Sliding)   

2000. Single channel installation. Video. Black and white. Silent. Duration 38:21 min (continuous loop). Projection dimension minimum 4 x 3 meters.

Untitled (Horizontal Sliding) is a looped 38 min and 21 second video that shows a continuous tracking shot in what seems to be an infinite early twentieth-century apartment. The camera slides horizontally and room after room passes from view in a slow pace. The film was shot in a panoptic architectural model where the camera rotates in the centre of the model, replacing the gaze of the watchtower in the panopticon. Since the building is constructed in a circle and the camera rotates in the middle, it creates both an architectural and a filmic loop.

Commissions

An Imagined City

Temporary site-specific work on and around the old post office, Postenhuset, on Nybrogatan 57 in Stockholm. The piece was an architectural sound and light installation. October 18 - December 31 2012

During the restoration of the old post office on Nybrogatan 57, I transformed the building into an austere, black façade to use as my backdrop. In daylight the temporarily blackened building became the archetypal image of contemporary architecture, only to be transformed into a seemingly black hole at night.

When darkness fell windows lit up and shone their spotlights down onto the street. The beams were filled with voices that took the viewer on a journey through cities, places and buildings, in stories that are based on an archive of memories of cinematic rooms and spaces. The austere façade, or the black hole, became a screen onto which the audience could project their own memories, thoughts and ideas regarding architecture and what a city can be.

An Imagined City was a temporary staging of public space, a kind of theatre where everything is possible. What kind of city do we want? Which architecture is imaginable in the first place, and what happens when one temporarily dramatizes a quotidian milieu?

An Imagined City was produced by MAP, Mobile Art Production, in collaboration with Oscar Properties, the owners of the building on Nybrogatan 57.

Opera Scenography for Verdi's Macbeth

Premiered on June 13th 2012 (followed by15th, 18th, 21st, 24th, 26th). Grand Théâtre de Genève, Boulevard du Théâtre 11, Geneve. Conductor Ingo Metzmacher, Director Christof Loy, Costume Ursula Renzenbrink. Choreography Thomas Wilhelm, Light Bernd Purkrabek, Dramaturgy Yvonne Gebauer, Choir Ching-Lien Wu.

In 2012, the Grand Théâtre de Genève presented a production of the opera, under the direction of Christof Loy(de) who invited me to create the set design. In my own work I often deal with architecture and film and I designed a set which resembled a black and white film. I used Alfred Hitchcock's, Rebecca, and Carl Theodor Dreyer's Vampyr as key references to dive in the dark and psychic intimacy of the characters. The musical director was Ingo Metzmacher. Lady Macbeth was performed by mezzo-soprano Jennifer Larmore, Davide Damiani sang Macbeth, and Christian Van Horn was Banco.

Silver Screen

2011. Competition proposal for ECOSOC chamber, UN building New York

The United Nations (UN) building in New York was designed by Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer.  Completed in 1953, the building’s large planes of glass communicated openness and clarity, which could be fittingly extended to the task of those working in the United Nations and towards the peace process. 

As one of four candidates, I was asked to work on a proposal for the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) chamber, and come up with an idea for replacing a large curtain that was hung to block sight of the delegates while they are inside of the large presentation space, from the view of the East River, as a security function.  My proposal made a connection between the peace process that is dependent on time, growing wisdom, and constant motion, with a solution that poetically invoked this process.  Instead of thinking in terms of a static, mostly decorative solution, I wanted to address time and distance as elements necessary in understanding our human condition, along with light as a constant reminder of what lay just outside of the chamber—the rest of the world.

My proposal for the ECOSOC chamber was based on watching a Polaroid photograph slowly develop.  But the “image” in my proposal would gradually appear over the course of 15 to 20 years. Instead of using a photographic process, I proposed to create a “screen” woven from a combination of silver fiber, and real silver thread.  I devised a way to use silver and its natural oxidization property as it comes into contact with air. In this oxidizing process, silver changes from “white” into “black” as it tarnishes, and depending on the amount of sulfur in the air, this process takes between 15-20 years.

The image that would “develop” on the screen over years, would be an image that was taken in the present - a view of the East River and Brooklyn from the viewpoint of the delegates in the chamber. To put it another way, or more poetically, the image of today would be viewed as part of the past.  It would be like the light seen from a distant star - when the light finally reached our sight, it tells us of an existence that has already passed.  The screen would start out as a purely silver surface, reflecting light into the chamber and suggesting that light is pushing through the screen from the outside, forming the image.  It takes time and distance to see our own time, and when we finally can understand it, it will have become a part of history.

Safe Zones No. 7 - Safe Zones No. 11

2001-2006. Safe Zones  is  permanent site-specific installations consisting of architectural models re-creating the actual rooms where the models are placed, along with surveillance cameras and a monitor that show the live transmitted footage from the models. Safe Zones installations can be seen in The Modern Museum in Stockholm, ZKM in Karlsruhe, Museum De Paviljoens in Almere.

Promenade

2006. Single channel & splitscreen installation. Video. Black and white. Silent. Duration 58:15 min (continuous loop). Projection dimensions 5 x 2,81 meters & 10 x 2,81 meters.

The work was produced as site specific single channel installation in conjuction with a group show at Museum Calle Alcala 31 in Madrid and the work is now part of collection Consejeria de Cultura of the Comunidad de Madrid. The work also exist in a spit screen installation version.

The film produced for the exhibition uses the old bank space at Calle Alcala which today host an art museum as the location for the film and make a 5 minute and 15 second slow circle around the main hall in the space.

Memory

1999. Pavillion 4 x 4 x 4 meter, with wall text and c-print.

The work Memory is a 4x4x4 meter pavilion that was build for a summer exhibition in 1999 in Wanås sculpture park  in south of Sweden. The house is modeled after a house on Sicily. On the left wall inside the pavilion a 50x50 image of the original house from sicily were place. On the wall opposite from the image a 50x50 cm text plate were placed with the following text:

Last summer I walked past a little house. The house lay apart, slant below from where I came walking. In the light from the doorway I saw two men masturbating. They were standing in the middle of the room with their backs to each other.

Non video works

An Imagined City

2012. 6 channel looped directional sound installation. Duration ~ 21 minute on each channel. The work was produced with the help from Archizoom Lausanne, Göteborgs Konsthall, MAP Mobile Art Production  Stockholm and Oscar Properties.

Act 1, Scene 1

C-Print and Inkjet print, 57 x 44 cm (Framed 60 x 80 cm) , 44 x 22 cm (Framed 60 x 36 cm)

School Corridor, 1986

2010. Kinetic sculpture. Aluminium, steel, LED lamps, motor. Dimensions 135 x ø92.5cm

This work is something between a sculpture and a mechanical film. I’ve constructed a series of small, three-dimensional “film frames” creating a horizontal wheel, recalling a film reel. When the wheel rotates, the rooms are fed forward like a film in a projector, creating an animation. The rooms are constructed with imperfections and scratches so that the feeling of early animation mechanisms and early cinema comes to mind.

In the work I’m addressing an idea of how memories and film-animations have a connection to each other by the way they are similarly constructed. To be able to create an animation and an illuminated frame—or in this case a room—it’s necessary to always have a dark interval before the next frame/room. The illuminated image is then imprinted on the retina and is linked by the eye's memory to the ensuing room, creating a continued movement.

The work is produced with the help from Konstnärsnämnden - the Swedish Arts Grants Committee.

The First Minute of the Rest of a Movie

2005. Collaborative work with Jan Mancuska for Bonner Kunstverein and Kunsthalle St Gallen. 1 cinema installation, 2 text/film screens 4 x 3 meters and 1 shadow back projection 4 x 3 meters.

That language can generate images and, vice versa, images language and speech is sufficiently well known. In the exhibition by Jonas Dahlberg (*1970) and Ján Mancuska (*1972), two artists meet, who – the different their work is – both place processes of understanding as subject matter in the core of their practice.

Understanding is always dependent on the point of view that is assumed. While Jonas Dahlberg explores the viewer’s standpoint and its fragility in space with his filmic images, Ján Mancuska deconstructs conceptual understanding, i.e. language, in space. Language and space are essential parameters that are basic to our understanding of the world. Language, image and space enter a bond to break down the processes of understanding and make them available for spatial experience.

In the Bonner Kunstverein, Dahlberg and Mancuska develop an exhibition dispositive that specifies the location of the visitor, his perception of the space he occupies and how it is to be understood in a labyrinthine system. The assumably stable ground beneath our feet and the conferring of associative meanings become physically tangible in their factual instability.

The exhibition is not a groupshow in a traditional sense. Jonas Dahlberg and Ján Mancuska are invited to undertake an artistic dialogue and develop an experimental field within which their body of works literally coincide. The aim of any group show is not only to display art in reference to specific conceptual and thematic topics, but to set up an intellectual and artistic dialogue. The latter is the starting point of the collaborative approach of Dahlberg and Mancuska. This exhibition is the first of a series of dialogical shows which takes place at the Bonner Kunstverein and which aims to question and search for different modes of collaborations.

The institution’s aim is not only to set up a platform for art and mediate it to a public, but also to foster possibilities for artists to develop and think into their practices in modes they otherwise could not.

With his installation “A Cup” Ján Mancuska was represented at Czech-Slovakian Pavilion ("Model of World") at the Venice Biennale 2005. His mostly sculptural works concretize cognition and language, which are otherwise immaterial. Mancuska plays off space, in contrast to many other conceptual approaches that are occupied with assigning meaning. Definitional thinking takes on the spatial form of a sculpturally modulated vocabulary, making cognitive processes physically tangible. What is striking is the "economy" of the means - particularly since the artist’s somewhat laconic approach to meaningful questions of fundamental processes of understanding also boasts an immanently subtle humor.

While Mancuska’s work is not comprehensible until the visitor walks around the room and understanding is itself deconstructed in space, Jonas Dahlberg’s video installations transport the viewer to an insecure state of disorientation. The perception of his own location is destabilized in slow camera swings through deserted cities or houses. Dahlberg constructs scale-model houses that he then films, often playing off cinematographic takes, and thereby developing projected illusionistic and alienating spaces. Physical and psychological instability is conferred on the viewer. Irritated by his own perceptual input of where he is, the viewer will end up at times weightless, at times dizzy. The concept of the uncanny (unheimlich or non-homey), which Freud defined as the collapse of our familiar, at-home feeling, is a characteristic of Dalhberg’s work and inquires into the position of the “self”, of one’s own viewing locale.

Safe Zones No. 1

1996 - 2003. Diptych. Framed offset print 180 x 90 cm and framed c-prints 180 x 90 cm.

Safe Zones no 1 is a diptych of  two 180 x 90 cm frames . The left frame shows three night time images of views inside an apartment where someone has rifles on the wall. The right frame shows a plan drawing with two apartments and a text. The plan drawing shows all possible sight lines between these two apartments and the text is as follows:

In 1995, just after I was settled in a new apartment, I was standing at the window when I noticed that a neighbour on the opposite side of the street had guns on the walls.

I got a lot of ideas, some of them quite silly, and I started to photograph his apartment. I thought that if I were to be shot dead, the police would find the photos and catch the killer. Anyway, with the photos as raw material I then began to reconstruct his apartment and made a drawing, including the parts that were not visible from my view.

A few weeks later I rearranged the furniture to the zones which he wouldn't be able to see from his windows. I also decided to live my life exclusively in these safe zones whenever I was at home, which certainly meant that some of the everyday life situations suddenly got rather complicated. However, from his point of view my apartment now was completely empty.

I never met my neighbour or entered his home, and one day when I came back from a trip his apartment was empty.

Exhibition archive

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

About

Jonas Dahlberg (b. 1970) lives and works in Stockholm Sweden. He studied architecture at Lunds Technical High School from 1993 to 1995. From 1995 to 2000 he studied art at Malmö Art Academy where he received his M.F.A. in 2000. Since 2000 he has developed a series of videos that primarily consist of slow movements through architectural spaces. The videos are created by building miniaturized architectural sets that are filmed through experimental methods.

In addition to video and video installation, his practice includes public art works, sculptures, commissions, book projects and photography. In June 2012, Dahlberg's concept and set design for an opera production of Guiseppe Verdi's Macbeth debuted at the Grand Theatre in Geneva.

Through his installations, be they video or otherwise, Jonas Dahlberg works with space. Architecture is addressed as a political place that influences how we understand ourselves, and how the body and mind experience the outside world.

Among other exhibitions  Index Foundation Stockholm (2001), Manifesta 4 Frankfurt (2002), Italian Pavillion at 50th Biennale di Venezia (2003), National representative for Sweden at 26th Bienal de São Paolo (2004), Momentum 04 Moss (2004), Modern Museum Stockholm (2005), Marian Goodman Paris (2005), FRAC Dijon (2006), Taipei Biennal (2006), Leeum Museum of Art Seoul (2007) Kunsthalle Wien (2008), Kunstmuseum Stuttgart (2009), Galerie Nordenhake (2010, 2008, 2006, 2004) The Lisbon Architecture Triennale (2010),  Prospect II New Orleans Biennial (2011), Kunstmuseum Bonn (2013).

Lectures/workshops/studio talks include venues such as Architecture Association London,  École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Bergen National Academy of the Arts,  KTH School of Architecture Stockholm, University College of Arts, Crafts and Design Stockholm, The Royal Institute of Art Stockholm, Valand School of fine Art University of Gotheburg and Beckmans college of Design Stockholm.

Contact