A S M U N D H AVS T E E N - M I K K E L S E N : L O O K AT T H I S WO R L D
Look
At This
World
Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen
Look
At This
World
15 Clerkenwell Close,
London, EC1R 0AA
[email protected]
+44 (0) 207 253 3039
www.foldgallery.com
Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen
A S M U N D H AVS T E E N- M I K K E L S E N : L O O K AT T H I S WO R L D
A S M U N D H AVS T E E N- M I K K E L S E N : L O O K AT T H I S WO R L D
On waking up, Mr. B was keenly
aware of the fact that he had had
too much to drink the night before:
after a successful bid on a property in the central district, he had
decided to celebrate by inviting
some friends to dinner, which turned
into a long night of conversation.
The sun shone brightly through the
muslin curtains and reflected on his
iPhone, reminding Mr. B that he had
an appointment that morning. Grabbing the phone to check the time, he
saw that he would have to get up in
a hurry and get going. It was in such
a state that Mr. B made his way to
Mr. H’s studio.
Large, tall imposing buildings filled
the space with seriousness, and as
Mr. B walked up to the building—
one of many look-alikes—he was
filled with a mild apprehension. Why
was he here?
Mr. B found his way to the right
building, but the intercom didn’t
seem to be working, so he called Mr.
H and said he had arrived. Mr. H took
Mr. B into the building, which seemed
to be mostly empty—occupied with
yet-to-be-filled offices and studios.
Mr. B worried that without his guide
he might get lost in the maze of
rooms and offices. The upper, darker
levels of the building were left empty
by Mr. B’s imagination.
On his way to an appointment he
didn’t really know why he made, it
struck Mr. B that he didn’t really
know what this meeting was going
to be about. Mr. H had contacted Mr.
B out of the blue, and had merely
said that he wanted to contract
him for some work. On the way to
the meeting, Mr. B realized that he
had never been to the part of town
where Mr. H’s office was located; it
was outside of the center of town
and in an area that seemed as if it
had popped up over night. But what
better setting could be provided to
the architects who wanted to experiment with big building blocks?
Despite the odd feeling he had had,
Mr. B actually found Mr. H’s office
comfortable and welcoming. What
immediately caught his eye was a
black leather office chair. It wasn’t
the kind you see some CEO sitting
in; it lacked armrests, and it wasn’t
made of ornamental mahogany. The
chair looked much simpler, with
plain leather and thin black metal
tubing; it looked as if it could be anyone’s office chair and its anonymity matched the inconspicuousness
of the building it was located in.
The black leather shone in the mild
Aaron Bogart
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A S M U N D H AVS T E E N- M I K K E L S E N : L O O K AT T H I S WO R L D
light of the room that was filtered
through venetian blinds and the
impersonality of its back and seat
almost began to look friendly.
A S M U N D H AVS T E E N- M I K K E L S E N : L O O K AT T H I S WO R L D
found: splotches of color here and
there, and from one perspective an
almost loss of dimensionality. These
traces of humanity were reassuring,
they seemed to tell Mr. B that this
object is part of the continuum of life
too; an object that adds something
to our life, perhaps making it easier,
giving us relief—relief from tired feet
or perhaps merely distracting us.
Mr. H asked Mr. B to sit, while he explained what was to be done, what
the rules were to be. Mr. B sat and
listened, and he adjusted to his surroundings—as somebody who has to
work in an office cubicle for the first
time adjusts himself as quickly as he
can. And Mr. B began to appreciate
the image of the chair in his present surroundings. The chair doesn’t
care who sits in it, or where it is
placed; it’s just an object, one among
many whose formal qualities allow
freedom and open-ended interpretation—it could belong to anyone.
Looking at the chair, at its placement before a desk, with nothing but
shadows falling around it, Mr. B began to see the absence of what you
would normally expect to find on a
desk—a computer, a phone, papers,
and so on—as a relief. It was a relief
from the burden of the humdrum of
the everyday. The workaday routine
was thwarted by this absence, and it
set Mr. B fully back at ease.
Mr. B wondered whether it isn’t this
absence—the unoccupied space
that surrounds the chair—that could
provide answers to his questions.
But where was the chair that Mr. B
saw? Was it only in his mind, or was
it part of the furniture of life? Could
it have been more than one? Could
there have been many chairs? We’ll
never know the answer to these
questions because Mr. B walked out
of Mr. H’s office, through the desolate area surrounding it, and back to
the center of town, never to be heard
from again.
—Aaron Bogart
Aaron Bogart, *1975, is a freelance editor and
writer. He has edited for Hatje Cantz and
Taschen, and has contributed to
www.Artforum.com and Modern Painters, as
well as to artist monographs. Prior to 2011
he tutored in philosphy at the Univeristy of
Sheffield, where he also wrote his PhD. He
currently lives between New York City and
Berlin.
The lines of its appearance were exact, but if you looked close enough,
subtle imperfections were to be
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A S M U N D H AVS T E E N- M I K K E L S E N : L O O K AT T H I S WO R L D
A tribute
to art as an attempt to overcome reality,
to superimpose upon reality an image
more real than the world itself,
the constructed world of his own:
Tati Ville.
In this new world,
a hyperworld,
he presents an eternal laughter
of blinking neon lights, spinning chairs, and a general
feeling of disorientation.
What have we done to ourselves?
Are we not still but small figments:
flesh, bones and blood hovering in the universe,
pretentious and suffering from vanity?
Look At This World
– A Ventilated Prose-Performance
by Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen, Berlin, 2013
What first amazed me
about Jacques T.
was his ability to convey space
as a subject with its own will.
And in this game of spaces,
the human being was almost
a puppet,
seemingly free,
subdued to a spatial logic
that it itself had created
and yet now had become the slave of.
Are we ready for Playtime?
The laughter is actually self-laughter:
we produce abstract structures
that protect us from the violence of being,
yet which in return make us live in a world
where we are not quite at home.
Is this really what we want?
This matrix of egoism and self-interest?
Take a look at this world.
Be a stoic.
Develop your own cosmic consciousness.
Here we are,
five years after a global meltdown,
a morgage crisis, a hysteria lane,
and the system is still functioning.
Did anything really happen to capitalism,
to the wars it is waging
against the human race
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in its search for
new markets,
new territories,
new ressources,
new cheap labour?
A S M U N D H AVS T E E N- M I K K E L S E N : L O O K AT T H I S WO R L D
Slam your doors
in golden silence.
It makes you feel better.
If I could,
I would get away.
Disappear.
A great escape
to a land of beginnings.
Not a nobody,
just a body.
Tati:
a world of analogue media.
Us:
a digital world,
immersing us
into a time of white heat,
saturated with swaps, swipes and bytes.
And yet, am I really here?
Tati created the world of the future,
which became real:
his office world of steel, glass and polished marble
is today the setting of headquarters
deciding the direction of capitalism.
A prefiguring of a critique
of contemporary modern life.
Be aware of how any spatial or
representational logic transforms you.
You think you are using it, but it is using you.
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When he came to my new studio
at Storkower Str. in Berlin,
Mr. B. said to me:
“Mr. H., you have finally arrived
in the world of your own paintings!”
But only recently
did I realise that the colour-grades of my new paintings,
the futuristic blue of Tati and the flat yellow,
were on the facade of the building opposite me.
An architecture for a world
that once belonged to a radiant future,
but today is viewed as a ruin,
ready for demolition.
We are back from utopia,
only to rediscover our own place.
For the first time,
there has been
a discernable osmosis
between my architectural surroundings and
my actual artistic output.
There is a time-texture to my life,
and my spaces,
doubled with my own sense of failings,
shortcomings and disappointments.
I am in a face-space,
always reappearing to myself
as a stranger to be known.
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Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen
b. 1977, Aeroe, (DK). Lives and works in Berlin.
www.asmundhavsteen.net
EDUCATION
2003-09 MFA, Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen.
2007-08 Hochschule für Bildende Kunst, Hamburg.
2004-05 CCA Research Program, Kitakyushu, Japan.
1996-03 MA in literature and philosophy, University of Copenhagen.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2013
Look At This World, Fold Gallery, London
2012
Blue Devils, Galerie MøllerWitt, Aarhus, Denmark.
2011
The Future Begins at Home, Rønnebæksholm ArtCenter, Denmark.
2010
Estrangement City, Politikens Galleri, Copenhagen.
Meditations on the Uncanny, Helene Nyborg Contemporary,
Copenhagen.
2008
Life in the Box, Helene Nyborg Contemporary, Copenhagen.
2007
Supernumeral (with Emil W. Hertz), Marstal Museum, Aeroe.
2006
Mentalscapes, Helene Nyborg Contemporary, Copenhagen.
Frontal/Sideways, The Scandinavian House, Prague.
2004
Melting Barricades (with Inuk Silis Høegh), North Atlantic House,
Copenhagen, and Katuaq, Nuuk, Greenland.
Collapsing Structures (with Rune Søchting and Jonas Olesen), The
Projectroom, Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen.
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2012
Needle In A Cloud, Fold Gallery, London.
Snowtime, Galleri KANT, Esbjerg, Denmark.
2011
Enter II, Kunsthallen Brandts, Odense, Denmark.
Summer Salon, Helene Nyborg Contemporary, Copenhagen.
Primitive Accumulation, Fold Gallery, London.
Uferhallen Kunstaktien, Uferhallen, Berlin.
3-1Kunstauktion, Kunsten, Aalborg.
Painterly Delight II, Ystad Konstmuseum, Sweden.
2010
Geist III, Auguststr. 17, Berlin.
No Food No Drink No Sticky Lollies, Stadtbad Wedding, Berlin.
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2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
Painterly Delight, Art Centre Silkeborg Bad, Denmark.
Greetings to Ib Geertsen, Danish Graphic Center, Copenhagen.
Radical Adults, The Forgotten Bar Project, Berlin.
CRW – Contemporary Reflections on Warfare, BKS Garage, Copenhagen.
Copenhagen City Art Collection 2006-2009, Copenhagen.
The Hello Show, Helene Nyborg Contemporary, Copenhagen.
Art in the Blood, Utzon Center, Aalborg.
A Formal Figure, Galerie im Regierungsviertel, Berlin.
Out of Wedding, UferHallen, Berlin.
Formation, Halle 41, Berlin.
Exit, Gl. Strand, Copenhagen.
Jahresausstellung, HfBK, Hamburg.
InnenRaum, Galerie MøllerWitt, Aarhus, Denmark.
Autolabor, Brandenburgischer Kunstverein Potsdam e.V., Germany.
PT07, Vestjyllands Kunstmuseum, Tistrup, Denmark.
Proverbs, Portalen, Greve, Denmark.
Re-thinking Nordic Colonialism, The Living Art Museum, Nifka,
Reykjavik, Iceland.
Contemporary Art, Spring Exhibition, Charlottenborg, Copenhagen.
Total Production, Islands Brygge 83, Copenhagen.
Typhoon, Maeda Studio, Kitakyushu, Japan.
Minority Report, Aarhus, Denmark.
Young Contemporary Art, Frederiks Bastion, Copenhagen and
Inkonst, Malmø, Sweden.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
2013 Approximations, in Dialogues – Gruntuch & Ernst, Distanz Verlag,
Berlin.
2012
Malene Birkelund: Videnskaben lagt i blød, Fyens Stiftstidende, 19. Dec. 2012.
Arne de Boever: Stand By for Hyperdrive, Text for Blue Devils exhibition,
Nov. 2012.
Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen, Kunsten.nu., Nov. 2012.
2011
Enter II, catalogue, Kunsthallen Brandts, Odense, 2011.
The Future Begins at Home, catalogue, Rønnebæksholm, Næstved, 2011.
Dina Feilberg: Subtile Undersøgelser af Rum, Kunstmagasinet Janus,
Juni 2011.
Arne de Boever: New Wounds, in Primitive Accumulation, Catalogue,
London, 2011.
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2010
2009
2008
2007
2006 2005 2004
Estrangement City, Politiken, October 28th, 2010.
Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen, Information, July 24th,, 2010.
Meditations on the Uncanny, catalogue, Lettre Publishing, Copenhagen,
2010.
Kunsten at føle sig hjemme, radio-interview, P1 – Vita, May, 2010.
Lettre International 20 Jahre Mauerfall (visual contribution), Berlin und
Europa, 2009.
Beyond Architecture – Imaginative buildings and fictional cities, p. 40-41.
Edited by Lucas Freireiss, Gestalten Verlag, Berlin, 2009.
Melting Barricades, Sleek Magazine, Berlin, December 2008.
The Way We Live Now (visual contribution), Lettre Internationale, 2008.
Bente Scavenius: Klinisk renset for liv (review), Børsen, August 2008.
Torben Weirup: Udflugt til Blokland, Danish Art 07, Aschehoug,
Copenhagen, 2007.
Jesper Rasmussen: På Kant med Byens Dybder, Kunstmagasinet Janus,
September 2007.
The Celeste Art Prize 2007, catalogue, London, 2007.
Proverbs, catalogue, Portalen, Greve, 2006.
Frontal/Sideways, catalogue, The Scandinavian House, Prague, 2006.
May Misfeldt: Melting Barricades, Danish Art 05, Aschehoug,
Copenhagen, 2006.
Intimate Absence, Patrick Huse (ed.), Delta Press, and Henie Onstad
Kunstsenter, Norway, 2005.
CCA Research Program 2004-2005, cataloque, Kitakyushu, Japan,
2005.
Melting Barricades, catalogue, North Atlantic House, Copenhagen,
2004.
GRANTS
2011
Henry Heerup Legatet.
The Danish Art Counsil
COMMISSIONS
2013
Approximations, in Dialoges, Gruntuch & Ernst, Distanz Verlag, Berlin.
2012
Space of Complementarity, The Science Building, Nyborg Gymnasium.
Interferens, site-specific painting at Jazzhus Montmartre,
Copenhagen.
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The Great Escape
2013
130x100cm
Oil on canvas
Analogue, 2013, 152x102cm, Oil on canvas
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Matrix
2013
120x180cm
Oil on canvas
A S M U N D H AVS T E E N- M I K K E L S E N : L O O K AT T H I S WO R L D
Face Space, 2013, 80x55cm, Oil on canvas
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A S M U N D H AVS T E E N- M I K K E L S E N : L O O K AT T H I S WO R L D
Slam Your Doors
2013
130x100cm
Oil on canvas
Hysteria Lane
2013
134x105cm
Oil on canvas
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A S M U N D H AVS T E E N- M I K K E L S E N : L O O K AT T H I S WO R L D
Time-Texture
2013
104x140cm
Oil on canvas
White Heat
2013
78x60cm
Oil on canvas
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With thanks to:
Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen:
Look At This World
Arne de Boever
Aaron Bogart
Rosie Boycott
Peter Linde Busk
Dan Davis
Jonna & Troels Engberg-Pedersen
Eleanor Havsteen-Franklin
Collette Havsteen-Mikkelsen
Boris Boll Johansen
Matti Kunttu
Daisy Leitch
Søren Lose
Lotte Møller
Philippa Ramsden
Ilka & Andreas Ruby
Kim Savage
Charlie Viney
Tom Viney
Lars Møller Witt
This catalogue is published on the
occasion of the exhibition:
Look At This World
at Fold Gallery, London,
21 June – 20 July 2013.
Editor: Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen
Copy-editor: Melissa Larner
Design: Matti Kunttu / Tsto
Printer: 1stByte
© 2013
Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen,
Aaron Bogart, and Fold Gallery.
Fold Gallery
15 Clerkenwell Close
London EC1R 0AA
www.foldgallery.com
Special thanks to:
Anna, Johan, Caroline & Emil
No part of this book may be used
or reproduced in any matter
whatsoever without written
permission except in the case of
brief quotations embodied in critical
articles and reviews.
Photo credits: Uwe Walter and
Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen.
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