SUPERFLEX
Whatever Works
19 January - 10 March 2018
Opening: 19 January 6 - 8 pm
SUPERFLEX and Daniel McClean in Conversation: Saturday, January 20th 3 pm
1301PE is pleased to announce it’s fifth exhibition with Danish artist’ group SUPERFLEX entitled Whatever Works.
Founded in Copenhagen in 1993 by Jakob Fenger, Rasmus Nielsen and Bjornstjerne Christiansen, SUPERFLEX created “tools” to invite people to participate and communicate in the development of experimental models. Works like Superchannel, Biogas Superkilen, Hospital Equipment and One Two Three Swing! propose solutions to real problems, such as sourcing and delivering necessary surgical equipment to hospitals in conflict areas, developing local and efficient alternative fuel sources or creating a common space for community discourse can occur.
Whatever Works surveys a series of ideas central to the world of SUPERFLEX. It commences with The Campaign, a billboard that was produced in 1994 around a series of meetings with different companies regarding a secret project sealed in orange pvc; SUPERFLEX on canvas, 1995, an orange painting inspired by International Klein Blue; Copy Right, 2007, a series of photographs of a misappropriated replica of Arne Jacobson’s Ant Chair which has been corrected; and concludes with their most recent works If Value Than Copy, Euphoria Now and ALL DATA TO THE PEOPLE.
In our current climate where movements, transactions and relations are constantly registered and analyzed the access to data is equal to power. ALL DATA TO THE PEOPLE, a hand-painted mural that can be translated into any language, points out the asymmetry in the access to data, the right to information and distribution of power we are experiencing, and how the value of data is concentrated to very few commercial and state players. We are who we are registered as.
First conceived as a slogan for the work Copy shop 2005, If Value Than Copy, now takes shape as a transforming black and white work on canvas. Each edition in the series is unique and shows an increasingly distorted version of the design in a chronological order. The first edition featuring the original design is hand-painted with the following editions being printed to represent the nature of the analogue photocopy machine, originally bought and used in the first COPYSHOP in Copenhagen.
The Hong Kong Dollar is from their ongoing series Euphoria Now based on color schemes of global currencies. The conceptual starting point for these paintings was the discovery of a so-called ‘dream machine’ from the 1970’s. By directly referring to the colors of currencies, SUPERFLEX transferred the concept of the dream machine into contemporary society’s greatest hypnagogic hallucination of all: money. The first painting was conceived in 2015 with the seven colors of the euro note, and currently exists in 19 different currencies and economies including the: Swiss Franc, Japanese Yen, and the Cook Islands.
In 2017 SUPERFLEX was the recipient of the Hyundai Commission, One Two Three Swing!, in the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern, London. Museum solo exhibitions have included: Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, California; The Hayward Gallery, London, United Kingdom; 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan; Perez Art Museum, Miami, Florida; Fundación Jumex, Mexico City, Mexico; and Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Denmark ; Sharjah Biennial, UAE and the Venice Biennale.
