Altre voci, altre stanze

After the shows by Massimo Bartolini, Atelier van Lieshout, Vedovamazzei and Daniele Puppi, the solo show by Jonas Dahlberg continues the series of exhibitions entitled Altre voci, altre stanze/Other voices, other rooms, curated by Cloe Piccoli, to explore the research of contemporary artists in the field of environments. Abstract and physical spaces, true architectures or virtual simulations, projects in miniature or interventions in real buildings: in recent years many artists have chosen to work on the notion of spaces. They have built rooms, houses, ateliers, studios, boats, neighborhoods, entire cities with the humanistic aim of putting man back at the center of the universe, and with the idea of creating spaces as places of experience whose precise, particular character can stimulate the mind and the senses, touching our deepest emotions.

In a period in which urban evolution is moving in the direction of the “Generic City”, as it has been defined by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas in his book S,M,L,XL, in sprawling urban aggregates without history or roots, characterized by variable identity in constant transformation, artists are inventing and constructing spaces in pursuit of a precise, definite, unmistakable identity.

While the Generic City, this complex, elusive contemporary phenomenon, is “a place freed from the confinement of the center and the tyranny of identity a city without history large enough for everyone equally exciting and boring, without distinction, in every point superficial as a Hollywood studio, which can produce a new identity every Monday morning”, on the other hand artists create personal, paradoxical environments where nothing is predictable or left to chance, but in which every element interacts with the visitor.

In his first solo show in Italy Swedish artist Jonas Dahlberg presents three environmental installations that combine drawings, photographs and projections. With Safe Zones no. 1, 1995-2003, Untitled (Horizontal Sliding), 2000, Plan drawing Set design for "Untitled (Horizontal Sliding)”, 2000-2003, Dahlberg creates a spatial itinerary in the gallery, through the themes of control and surveillance. How can space be monitored, controlled, spied on? How do these actions modify the interpretation of the place? And how do they influence the behavior of people? Thus Dahlberg creates and underlines situations and environments in which active or passive surveillance, undergone or exercised, triggers a series of transformations in the behavior of people and their perception of places and situations. In Safe Zone no. 1, a work on which the artist has been concentrating for years, shown for the first time at the Magazzino d’Arte Moderna, Dahlberg completely redesigns his apartment in reaction to the discover of another, threatening place that he too begins to obsessively monitor. Dahlberg’s places, in films, installations, photographs or drawings, also have a strong poetic, introspective side. They are deserted, alienating environments that plunge the visitor into a physical and mental experience.

A participant at the Venice Biennial now in progress, in the exhibition Ritardi e Rivoluzioni, Jonas Dahlberg has taken part in important international events including Manifesta 4 European Biennial of Contemporary Art in Frankfurt, in 2002, and CTRL SPACE, ZKM, Zentrum für Kunst und Mediatechnologie, Karlsruhe, 2001.