Venice Art Biennale 2013: National Pavilions Around Town – Norway.

 Photograph courtesy OCA

  

Venice Art Biennale 2013:  National Pavilions Around Town – Norway.   'Beware of the Holy Whore: Edvard Munch, Lene Berg and the Dilemma of Emancipation' is a project organized by the Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA) and Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa in Venice, as the official Norwegian representation at the Biennale. The exhibition, on until September 22, includes a series of rarely exhibited works by Edvard Munch in addition to a newly commissioned film by Lene Berg, which revolves around emancipation as an issue always vexed with contradiction, between the realm of freedom and the consequences of the isolation that often accompany the pursue of a qualitatively different, 'alternative' life. 

Above.  Edvard Munch Social Studies: Causes and Effect, 1910 lithographic crayon on cream wove paper.

 

Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa:  Norwegian Pavilion. Edvard Munch, Inheritance, 1916 wax crayon on paper.  Symbolic Study, 1893-94, unprimed cardboard. Old Woman, 1902, etching and drypoint on copperplate.

 

Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa:  Norwegian Pavilion. The exhibition, curated by Marta Kuzma, Angela Vettese, and Pablo Lafuente, brings together rarely exhibited works from the collection of the Munch Museum in Oslo with Lene Berg's new film Ung Løs Gris (Dirty Young Loose, 2013) in order to explore the relationship between art, its social context and changing gender relationships, both in the age of emancipation in which Munch lived and today.
Above. Edvard Munch,  Odour of Death, 1895 Tempera on unprimed cardboard. Hospital Ward, 1897-99, oil on unprimed canvas.

Photograph courtesy OCA by Bettina Schiebe

Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa: Norwegian Pavilion. A still from Lene Berg's Dirty Young Loose (2013), a film that concentrates on three stereotypical characters who are interrogated about their roles as either victims or perpetrators in a complex situation. The film explores the interpretation of human behavior based on preconceived concepts and established norms. Just like the exhibition as a whole, the film presents the deconstruction of an original scene which functions as a catalyst for a revision of the politics of liberation, of gender struggle and of internal conflict, the dilemma of emancipation.