Mikael Brkic
VI, VII
29.05-28.06.2015
PIE: Performance, Image, Exposure
†
The artist has recently taken a day job at a corporation operating in the online fashion retail market. The general framework for this exhibition, therefore, is laid out by various methods, conventions, managerial frameworks etc. from textbook Business language and from the experience of working at the corporation. For instance, at first glance, the exhibition is repeated with a slight variation at either side of the separating wall structure, mirroring an A/B or ‘split’ testing experiment used in marketing intelligence and the field of statistics.
There are three different types of work in the show, each fulfilling different functions in the artist's’ thinking about Business and the corporation. Themes and motives are segued, and common to all the work is the gesture of grabbing. The artist sees grabbing as part of an indexical task that he unwillingly or willingly performs, perhaps also at the behest of the Algorithm.
The paintings JIT, JF, OKR and EoSS lay bare a digesting process in thinking of the concepts they represent, along the immanent plane of the white cube wall. Featured in them are objects like coffee cups, clothes hangers, data chips and signboards.
A wall-mounted assemblage features the vine as a ‘history’ device devouring items representative of fashions and taste and folding them into the vine. In Poussin’s The Empire of Flora, all mortals are transformed into plants, as the vine grows through time. Connected to this image are ideas like eternal return, cyclical development, mumbling and whispers from the grapevine of history.
Lastly, the viewer is faced with a freestanding assemblage based on allegorical frontispieces of science books, a scholastic convention popular before the Enlightenment. The severing of exclusive rights to knowledge from Divine Providence also severed the ties that knowledge production had to long-established methods, representations and a certain poetic language which simply and unceremoniously fell out of style.
Here perhaps is also a point of self-reflexiveness; how do these outdated forms of art retain their relevance faced with the shape of things to come?
Mystic knowledge and Business insights informs the work, but at the same time the work knows nothing. The artist considers his personal knowledge against this framework and delivers a status report from the depths of an inner process. Keywords from the session: Holistic.
Drawing on art historical references, the vine is to be understood as the ever-growing, penultimate stand-in for continuity and transformation in art harking back to the Ancients. The materials and work begs the question of relevance set up against new media like computer science and an internet of things.
Where my humans at?
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Notes:
1. The PIE-method outlines 3 points to focus on in order to better your networking capabilities and swift ascension within a company or business.
† At the intersection of an autonomous Algorithm and the human faculties stands the institution Business. Business, as a highly concentrated center of power must fulfill certain obligations towards The Algorithm, generally understood to be making all performance channels work towards attaining higher goals or Key Performance Indicators. In the meantime Business also has to fulfill obligations towards its human staff, their culture, their hopes and aspirations within the Business.
2. Just In Time, Jour-Fixe, Objectives & Key Results and End of Season Sale
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Norwegian artist Mikael D. Brkic (b. Oslo, 1987) lives and works between Berlin and Oslo. Brkic has attended The Mountain School of Art in Los Angeles, Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main and Kunstakademiet ved Kunsthøgskolen in Oslo.
Brkic has been actively involved in the journal Provence (www.provence.st).
Previous exhibitions include 911.000 BC, Grand Century, New York; Homser i Posten, Saltarelli Salong, Oslo; Nervous Neighbors, Dortmund Bodega, Oslo; Pool/Heat, Verdens Ende Kunstforening, Tjøme; Never on Sunday, Tbilisi, Georgia and To Contain a Sense of Self, Galuzin Gallery/TAFKAG, Oslo.
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The exhibition "Mikael Brkic," will open with a preview at Tordenskiolds gate 12, Oslo N-0160, on August 14th from 19:00-21:00. All are very welcome.
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"Mikael Brkic" is supported by Kulturrådet.
Mikael Brkic, VI VII, Oslo
http://vivii.no