Swedish artist Klara Lidén's installations, public interventions, and impromptu actions documented on camera are defined by a subversive humour that explores the composition of physical, public, and private spaces in the urban environment.
Read MoreKlara Lidén's early short films revolve around improvised performances—a theme that has come to characterise her practice. Her actions, usually carried out in urban spaces, are often puzzling to the point of absurd. In Paralyzed (2003), for example, the artist dances in a train as her fellow passengers observe or ignore her, while in The Myth of Progress (Moonwalk) (2008), she copies Michael Jackson's iconic moonwalk dance against the backdrop of night-time Manhattan.
In Klara Lidén's photographic works, the artist similarly presents herself in physical contact with the urban city. Self-Portrait with Keys to the City (2005) shows the artist opening her coat, its inside lined with workman tools, while Untitled (Down) (2011) captures her in the middle of going down a manhole. In Untitled (Pier) (2013), in a particularly poignant scene, she stands, without proffering a context, on an old wooden post that sticks out of the water.
Lidén is also known for her use of discarded and insignificant materials. In her installation Unheimlich Manöver—presented at Modern Museet, Stockholm in 2007—Lidén filled the exhibition space with furniture and objects from her apartment. The artist also utilised her vast archive of urban detritus to create Untitled (Poster Painting) (2008): a large, wall-mounted collage for which she layered found paper fliers underneath a piece of white paper.
Lidén often manipulates the architecture of her exhibition venues to further contextualise the works presented therein. For Grounding, her 2018 solo show at Reena Spaulings Fine Art in New York, the artist projected an eponymous video, in which she periodically falls for no apparent reason while wandering through New York City, onto a wooden ramp at 60 degrees, the surface evoking the metal entrance ramps of many New York shops.
Lidén spent the bulk of her education in Stockholm, completing her studies at the Royal Institute of Technology's School of Architecture in 2004, and at Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design in 2007. At the 53rd Venice Biennale, as part of the artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset's curation of the Danish and Nordic Pavilions, Lidén installed the fictional Teenage Room (2009). In the following Biennale, she received a special mention from the jury for her installation Untitled (Trashcan) (2010).
Lidén lives and works in Berlin.
Turn Me On, Sadie Coles HQ, London (2020); Auf jeden Fall, Vienna Secession (2019); Berlin Fall, Galerie Neu, Berlin (2019); LAVORO (with Karl Holmqvist), Indipendenza, Rome (2017); The Great Indoors, Reena Spaulings Fine Art, Los Angeles (2017); Battement battu, WIELS, Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels (2015); The Myth of Progress, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2013).
Surface and Custom, Shiseido Gallery, Tokyo (2019); Lampen, Galerie Francesca Pia, Zürich (2018); Stories of Almost Everyone, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2018); 15th Istanbul Biennial (2017); Adventures of the Black Square: Abstract Art and Society 1915–2015, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2015); Contemporary Collection, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2014).
Sherry Paik | Ocula | 2020
