Nina Beier's multimedia installations, performative sculptures, and static assemblages incorporate everyday objects into theatrical still lifes that examine the cultural symbolism embedded in them.
Read MoreBeier often manipulates her subject's materiality by exposing its fragility or durability. China (2016), for example, comprises a porcelain vase and porcelain dog with large, jagged holes cut into them; for the installation Ruin (2018), the artist moulded soap into bricks and laid them across the floor among bugs and dirt.
Beier also pairs valuable and disposable items to spark conversations between them. In the sculpture Real Estate #01 (2013), an office chair headrest is inserted into a tall, white granite plinth, while in the installation FOOD CHAIN CAFE (2018), French baguettes are draped over marble lion statues and stuffed through imitation watches and bracelets. Commonplace articles appear together in unexpected ways, such as the hand-rolled cigars that replace drainpipes of ceramic sinks in Plug (2018), or the human hair wigs laid flat on picture frames in Feathered chocolate jagged glam (2014) or Layered Side-Swept Ombre (2015).
The bizarre arrangement of objects in Beier's work often warrants a double-take. In Allegory of charity (2015), for instance, a ceramic cup floats impossibly in the air—seemingly defying gravity—held up only by the stream of coffee beans that are being poured from the receptacle. For Anti-ageing—a performance piece at Swiss Institute, New York, produced for Performa 15 in 2015—Beier used a trained dog to lie still in a luxury suite display. Only the subtle movement of the dog's chest betrayed the illusion that it was not real. She also hired performers to complete various time-dependent domestic activities in the suite, such as smoking a packet of cigarettes, drying a facial mud mask, and waiting for vegetables to ripen. Further blurring the line between life and its image, Beier placed webcams, monitors, and green screens in the gallery to allow visitors to digitally transpose themselves into 'living still lifes'.
For the performance The Complete Works, staged at London's Tate Modern in 2012, Beier invited three retired dancers to enact every piece of choreography they had ever learnt in the chronological order. Following the performers' individual lives and the history of choreography through their moves, Beier drew attention to the fact that daily life, whether involving a banal activity or poetic movement, cannot exist outside the rigid regime of time.
Beier graduated from the Royal College of Art, London, in 2004, and has shown her works in the Riga International Biennale of Contemporary Art (2020), Biennale of Sydney (2016), and Lyon Biennale (2015) among others. In 2021, Nina Beier was the rewarded the New Carlsberg Foundation's Artist Award in recognition of her contributions to contemporary Danish art.
Hard Feelings, PAOS GDL, Guadalajara (2020); Housebroken, Kunsthal Gent, Belgium (2019); European Interiors II, Croy Nielsen, Vienna (2019); The Downer, Berlin (2018); Baby, Metro Pictures, New York (2018)'; European Interiors, Spike Island, Bristol (2018); Retrospective, JoséGarcía, MX, Mexico City (2017); Four Stomachs III, Objectif Exhiitions, Antwerp (2014).
Città irreale, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland (2021); New Acquisitions, SMK National Gallery of Denmark (2020); The Artist is Present, Yuz Museum, Shanghai (2018); Cool, Calm and Collected, ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Denmark (2017); A New Ballardian Vision, Metro Pictures, New York (2017); No Eyes Dry, Art Sonje Center and One And J. Gallery, Seoul (2017); Question the Wall Itself, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2016).
Genista Jurgens | Ocula | 2021
