Ylva Ogland: mirrors, variations and heterotopias

There looks to be a very interesting exhibition at Röda Sten Konsthall (RSK) in Gothenburg: Diverse Variations of Other Spaces by one of Sweden’s most renowned contemporary artists, Ylva Ogland. Consisting of more than 75 paintings, various scaled installations and a number of ceremonial acts, the exhibition is the largest and most comprehensive exhibition to date of Ylva Ogland’s collected oeuvre. 

“The title of the exhibition is composed as a compilation of two influential references in Ylva Ogland’s practice. The first one being Johann Sebastian Bach’s noted piano aria popularly called “The Goldberg Variations” (1741), which explores the complexities of nuanced repetitions. The second one being the French philosopher Michel Foucault’s text “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias” (1967), in which he describes the concept of “heterotopia”.

Foucault illustrates his concept in multiple ways. In one example he refers to children’s play, when they invent games. They produce an imaginative space, but at the same time mirror the physical realities around them. A bed can become a boat or a sandbox a whole universe. Another of Foucault’s core examples of the heterotopian space is the mirror in itself. In the mirror, you see yourself while you are in fact in another place. By these examples, Foucault highlights the meaning of  “heterotopia” as a space of intangible otherness: particular type of space that reflects the slippage between the familiar and the unfamiliar between reality and utopia”.

 

Peter

7 October 2014