SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- YBCA is showing an exhibition by Berlin-based artist Nina Beier in its 2010_11 season of Big Ideas. Beier presents a new exhibition entitled Agents of Change: What Follows Will Follow II. This new work included a solo performance by former San Francisco Ballet principal dancer Muriel Maffre, a music performance by local sound artists Great Willow, and a visual arts installation of Beier's photographs.

Beier is known for using a range of media including photography, video, performance, and sculpture. Her previous work has focused on the shared actions, ideals, experiences, and histories that bind people together in close relationships, temporary groups, or sometimes abstract communities. The work often takes the form of simple instructions, at once precise and open to interpretation, that aim to subtly shift the ways in which viewers intuitively engage with each other within a specific context.

For YBCA, Beier reinvented The Complete Works, a dance performance that premiered in 2009 featuring dancer Roberta Escamilla Garrison. This solo performance within the exhibition space featured a retired dancer performing all the moves she has danced throughout her professional life - from memory and in chronological order.

Beier also collaborated with Great Willow in a music performance in the Yerba Buena Gardens. In between the Contemporary Jewish Museum and the Westin Hotel are three sculptures by famed modernist sculptor and designer Isamu Noguchi. Beier noticed that electrical sockets were installed at the base of the sculptures. This chance detail provoked her to create an "intervention" at the scene involving Great Willow, who plugged into the sculpture for music performance inspired by the sculptures.

Finally, in Gallery 3 Beier presents a new installation of photographs -creating the backdrop or what she calls "the set" for the entire exhibition.

Agents of Change: What Follows Will Follow II is presented as part of YBCA's Big Idea DARE: Innovations in art, action, audience, highlighting the intersection of art and audiences in new ways.

Nina Beier
Danish-born artist Nina Beier's interventions result in anything from sculpture to performance. Her works renegotiate general constructions as they appear in the social landscape as well as the conventions surrounding the artwork itself and the underlying awkwardness of these interactions is a recurring feature in Beier's production. Her conversational practice relies on the imprint of the individuals and scenarios that she encircles, adding a transient nature to her works. Exploring the exhibition as a situation, Beier uses the gaps in the construction of meaning to generate new possible readings of the work itself.

Besides her solo practice, Nina Beier has previously produced works in collaboration with Danish artist Marie Lund. Her work has been shown extensively throughout Europe as well as in the US, Japan, South Korea and Mexico. Beier currently lives in Berlin.