Projects 2000

AMATEUR/ELDSJÄL, variable research initiatives 1900 & 2000

20 May – 7 Sep, 2000 at Gothenburg Art Museum

Exhibition curators: Charles Esche, Mark Kremer and Adam Szymczyk


The home, viewed as the place where the tension between the private sphere and the external world is paramount, turns out to be one of the key motifs in the works that will be on show in 'Amateur'. In the historical section, focused at the art and culture of Göteborg around 1900, we present a deconstruction of the exhibitions of the Fürstenberg collection, which was originally displayed in the Fürstenberg Palace in the center of Göteborg. We also present a re-interpretation of the same collection by including works that did not belong to it but will help to shed light on repressed aspects of a collection built up on the dividing-line between the private and the public. Fürstenberg used his collection to show himself to the Göteborg citizens, but in revealing his heart, to paraphrase the historian Peter Gay, he was all too conscious of the kind of heart his audience wanted or was only willing to see.

This way of internalizing public tolerance doesn't occur in the work of the painter Arosenius, who rather made it an object of his scrutiny. His drawings and paintings from the earlier years contain direct attacks on the hypocrisy of bourgeois life - reason why he was marginalized in the Göteborg society. Fürstenberg, in any case, didn't bother to visit him in his studio. Arosenius' supposedly bohemian lifestyle made him suspect in the eyes of the collector. The lack of response of Ellen Key is the third character in the historical section of 'Amateur'. Key was a public persona from the start to the end of her career as a writer and spokesperson on social matters like the place of the woman, the rights of the child and the life of the worker. She made proposals - which we now would define as pre-modern - for improving the quality of daily life, and worked with architects and designers who visualized her ideas of how to furnish the house of workers. But the interior of her house at Strand, in the Swedish countryside, shows a mixture of an avant-garde vision and a wish to hold onto certain aspects of bourgeois life. It is an illustration of the contradictoriness that accompanied the end of the nineteenth century in Sweden, where society was in a state of flux and new paradigms were emerging. Creating the conditions in which this confusion can be shown is one of the main ambitions for the historical part of the exhibition.

The contemporary work in 'Amateur' is, in part, a response to the new paradigms that are emerging in the twentyfirst century. Projects by 19 artists and one art group will be presented on floors 2, 3 and 4 of the museum, the Hasselblad Center and the Göteborg Konsthall. The tension between the home and the external world is significant in many of the contemporary works. (For example the Danish art group GLOBE presents a work based on an investigation of the meaning of the Swedish notion home).

The artists in 'Amateur' share a second interest in art as a social and economic investigation, a research that is not bound within the confines of scientific knowledge but may well exploit it to its own ends. Imbued with the twist of the amateur enthusiast rather than the dour professional, these works look at the situation in Göteborg or in society at large and suggest different ways of seeing and interpreting the information they discover.

With Charles Esche and Adam Szymczyk, I hope many people will come and see the 'Amateur' exhibition, so that they can compare the work and research of Nordic and non-Nordic artists, and find out to what extent they resemble each other, and to what extent they are different. In the Nordic art context, either an obsession with Nordic identity, or a total denial of it seem to prevail when exhibitions are being prepared. For us as curators, the Nordic identity of artists has never been an issue. What was important for us when preparing our show, wa to develop a way of working that would stimulate and challenge the invited artists, Nordic and non-Nordic alike. We were however interested in bringing into play again (repressed or undervalued) aspects of the Nordic tradition. In this sense, our investigations of the Fiürstenberg collection and the heritage of Ellen Key, as well as our discovery of the work of Arosenius serve a purpose.

Mark Kremer

Mark Kremer worked as Nifca's exhibition co-ordinator from April 1998 to April 1999
Mark Kremer is currently based in Amsterdam, from where he works as curator and writer.

Text from NIFCA Info 1/2000


Amateur / Eldsjäl - Participating artists:

Eija-Liisa Ahtila (FIN)
Pawel Althamer (P)
Tacita Dean (ENG)
Maria Eichhorn (D)
Hreinn Fridfinnsson (IS/NL)
GLOBE (DK)
Jens Haaning (DK)
Susan Hiller (USA/ENG)
Job Koelewijn (NL)
Edward Krasinski (PL)
Maria Lindberg (S)
Kirsten Mosher (USA)
Dan Peterman (UA)
Børre Sæthre (N)
Gregor Schneider (D)
Annika Ström (S)
Jörgen Svensson (S)
Kathy Termin (AUS)
Thorvaldur Thorsteinsson (IS)
Richard Wright (SCO)