GATESHEAD.- BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead presents an exhibition with Swedish artist Nina Canell (born Växjö, Sweden in 1979). Canell’s practice questions the certainty of sculpture, giving substance to the intangible and lightness to the physical.
Canell’s seemingly unorthodox use of objects and materials can be seen as an attempt to articulate our intuitive understanding of the conditions around us. Transforming electrical currents, atmospheric elements, stray socks or chewing gum into sculptural components, her assemblages fuse matter and light to create delicate and ephemeral testing grounds.
Drawn to the minutiae of perception, Canell’s work traces the innate bond we have with our surrounding atmosphere. Testing this intimate intersection of audience, object, and event, the understated outcomes of her work are curious yet poetic.
Nina Canell: Near Here comprises a series of new and existing works in response to the specific architectural environment of BALTIC’s Level 2 gallery. The extraordinary height of this space has made it possible to include Overcoming the Current Resistance 2012, a curtain of neon tubes composed of some 200 elements, suspended in a copper frame. The gaseous components in the work create an ever shifting, pulsing electromagnetic energy field. Initially shown in the Cockatoo Island power plant as part of the Sydney Biennale, this will be the first time the work is exhibited in Europe.
The exhibition has been developed in collaboration with Camden Arts Centre, London.
NINA CANELL was born 1979 in Växjö, Sweden and studied in Dublin, Ireland. She lives and works in Berlin, Germany.
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS: Stray Warmings, Midway Contemporary, Minneapolis; Lautlos (two-person exhibition with Rolf Julius), Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (2013); Tendrils, The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin; Into the Eyes as Ends of Hair, Cubitt Gallery, London (2012); Ode to Outer Ends, Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel; To Let Stay Projecting As A Bit Of Branch On A Log, Mumok, Vienna (2011);Five Kinds of Water, Der Kunstverein, Hamburg (2009).
