Another Place Yet a Place (030)

Andersen’s Contemporary BERLIN is proud to announce Another Place Yet a Place, the first solo show at the gallery by Danish artist FOS. The exhibition explores the transition of knowledge from a pre-lingual, sensuous or intuitive place into a system organized through language and rational thought. This transition is characterized by repetitive information which, when encountering the apparatus of human perception, almost compels a physical shape. The transition is a membrane, a process, a ‘clutch’. The title Another Place Yet a Place thus points to FOS’ by now well known practice ‘Social Design’; a type of construction method for building a space or place with the aim of raising awareness of perception and social processes between people. To put it into FOS’ words: ‘I see the world as constituted of layers, only a small part of it visible to us and existing as a reaction of what lies underneath; 3D is a shadow of 4D’. Another Place Yet a Place leads on from FOS’ solo show Memory Theatre Twig at GAK in Bremen in 2008 and his recent solo show Clutch at Max Wigram in London. In Bremen, the exhibition was focused on the idea of the “cabinet of curiosities” as a symbol of the systematic organization of knowledge. In Clutch and in Another Place Yet a Place , FOS takes a “step back” from the concepts structuring the show in Bremen and introduces us to a space where information is yet to be collected. It is in the process of being discovered and organized. The tent in the gallery is the physical link between Another Place Yet a Place , and Memory, Theatre, Twig! The GAK Bremen show was structured around semi-transparent, colored tents that served as platforms for the materialization and organization of objects and memory. In the Clutch show one of these tents had been re-designed to fit the space and brought into a new context. And here in Another Place Yet a Place this investigation continuous in new sculptural works, a poster and a video projection. FOS’ overall practice investigates how physical space achieves significance through social interaction and how the aesthetics of this social space can challenge and transform social constructs. Referring to his approach as Social Design, the artist does not try to create models but rather to suggest solutions through the investigation of the physicality of social relations. His artistic approach is based on the question: when we live in an aestheticized society, where does the artist place his aesthetics?