Oliver Laric - Betweenness
Through his role at Modern Forms, Nick was instrumental in bringing Oliver Laric’s film work, Betweenness to Stedelijk’s collection and initiating its display at the museum in an exhibition running 2 October 2021 - 9 January 2022.
In a further major institutional engagement Hussam Otaibi / Modern Forms acquired and donated Betweenness to the Stedelijk Collection as part of its programme of donations to major contemporary art institutions across the world.
‘Guided by a selective and distinctive appropriation of history, art history and popular culture, Laric has long worked to collapse categories and undermine beliefs about authorship and authenticity. In his most recent work, Laric focuses these larger inquiries on the replication and mutation of forms and ideas, as well as the unstable terms that define their meaning and interpretation. His ongoing research into hybridity and transmutation has come to form a central thread in his practice.
Betweenness levels the artist’s far-reaching pool of source material, repurposing characters from anime, mushrooms growing in time-lapse, multiplying cells, people morphing into animals and marching soldier ants. Though pulled from a wealth of sources, these clips all highlight moments in time that might otherwise be imperceptible. Rather than being drawn anew in each frame as in traditional animation, Laric’s subjects are digitally plotted by the same stark, vectorized line, which moves continually between sequences. This potentially infinitely shifting line echoes the subject matter of the sequences being displayed on screen, suggesting a limitless number of unique permutations. A soundtrack composed by Ville Haimala of Amnesia Scanner accompanies the animation, weaving itself into the unfolding narrative. The resulting artwork is suggestive of instability, metamorphosis, a liberating flexibility and the power of multiplicity.’
From the press release accompanying Laric’s 2018 exhibition at Tanya Leighton, Berlin
Oliver Laric (b. 1981, Innsbruck, lives and works in Berlin) has recently shown at the St. Louis Art Museum; S.M.A.K., Ghent; and Kunstverein Braunschweig. Past solo exhibitions include: Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin; Secession, Vienna; Austrian Cultural Forum, London; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; and the MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge. His work has been included in group exhibitions at the Whitechapel Gallery, London; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Fridericianum, Kassel; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Kunstverein München; and Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. He participated in the 2016 Liverpool Biennial, the 2015 New Museum Triennial and 2018 São Paulo Bienal. He is represented by Tanya Leighton, Berlin.