Object and Space in the Expanded Suitcase

Opening Reception, May 7, 18:00 – 19:00
Raja Gallery, Tallinn, Estonia 2015/05/07 – 2015/05/24
“Object and Space” is a media specific group at Valand Academy in Gothenburg, Sweden, focusing on issues of subject-object relations, the politics of viewer activation and the spatio-temporal aspects of cognition. Through dialog the group works socio-cognitively to destabilize inherited understandings of sculpture and installation in order to construct meaning collectively.
A suitcase full of works by artists in “Object and Space” has now travelled to Tallinn for an exhibition at the Estonian Academy of Art in Tallinn.
This exhibition represents a cross-section of representative works by 14 artists from “Object and Space,” which can fit in a suitcase. The broad set of works contained interrogate the malleability of perception and cognition, using various strategies of de and refamiliarization.
The suitcase is hard shell, black plastic, with metal latticework and wheels. It’s volume measures 45cm x 67cm x 50cm. When full its mass weighs approximately 23 kilograms.
Participating artists:
Sara Andreasson
Andreas Braun
Emil Carlsiö
Alina Chaiderov
Antonio Fryk
Fanny Hellgren
Kim Jansson
Erik Lagerwall
Josef Mellergård
Louis Nitze
Livia Prawitz
Johan Rikenberg Jakobsson
Jacob Schill
Aldo Zetterman
Organized by Gabo Camnitzer (Valand Academy) and Kirke Kangro (Eesti Kunstiakadeemia)
“The jug’s [suitcase’s] thingness resides in its being qua vessel [suitcase]. We become aware of the vessel’s [suitcase’s] holding nature when we fill the jug [suitcase]. The jug’s [suitcase’s] bottom and sides obviously take on the task of holding. But not so fast! When we fill the jug [suitcase] with wine, do we pour the wine into the sides and bottom? At most, we pour the wine between the sides and over the bottom. Sides and bottom are, to be sure, what is impermeable in the vessel [suitcase]. But what is impermeable is not yet what does the holding. …The vessel’s [suitcase’s] thingness does not lie at all in the material of which it consists, but in the void that holds.”
-Martin Heidegger, The Thing [Suitcase]