NINA BEIER / JULIA ROMMEL / SIMONA RUNCAN: "How soon is now?"

NINA BEIER / JULIA ROMMEL / SIMONA RUNCAN

"HOW SOON IS NOW?"

STANDARD (OSLO) AT GALERIE GISELA CAPITAIN / ALBERTUSSTRASSE 9-11 / COLOGNE

01.09.-14.10.2023 / Preview: 01.09.2023 / 18.00-20.30

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"Imagine that there is another room as big as the one we are in". He pointed with the remote control: "… behind the loudspeakers".

"Do you hear that?", he asked, and allowed for a brief pause.

"That is when you know that you have the right setup!" The remote control was now all of a sudden pointing at me. I hesitantly nodded. As if that could convince him that I was hearing what I was supposed to hear, or indeed that I could convince anyone that knew anything about stereos. All I knew was that I was here to buy one, and that the salesman with the remote control was totally going to fleece me. He had that alpha energy about him. He had started suggesting a stereo that was twice my budget. He had then totally dismissed the records that I had brought with me, saying that they were poor recordings that did not do the stereo justice. Instead he had put on a record by Steely Dan. I had very little reason to like him. I never could bring myself to like Steely Dan either. Yet, as little there was to like about this situation that I found myself in, I was intrigued by the prospect of an additional room. While "Reelin' in the Years" was playing, I thought: what if my tiny studio apartment could double in size without me paying double rent?

Still, as the apartment measured a meagre 14 square meters, a doubling in size would only bring me to 28 square meters. Hence the layout was simple and straightforward: a bed on one side of the room and a large shelf to contain everything else on the other side. It was only several years later that I learnt about the Japanese Tansu chests, and I realised that my interior design solution was echoing that of the Edo period in early 17th century in Japan. These wooden cabinets, with their many drawers, shelves and screen doors, did not only allow for storage, but numerous functions and configurations. Like a Swiss Army knife that is folding and unfolding. Like the laureated Bob Dylan mumbling with his rasping voice, "I contain multitudes". Like the flying loft of the theatre, from which the curtains, lights and scenery flats are raised and lowered. When viewed from above, the painted and soft-covered backdrops are confined to a shallow space as they are neatly stored parallel to each other in the fly loft. When viewed from the seats of the theatre, these planes - once lowered onto the stage - make up depth and allow for infinite changes of places, landscapes and time. Similarly, the space that Tansu chest made up, or indeed the space that it was in, was continuously being puzzled and unpuzzled. Even more so in the cases where the cabinets were equipped with secret compartments, which could only be accessed by an intricate procedure of moving and removing interlocking parts. Knowing was unlocking a larger space than what at first appeared in front of you.

How many worlds can be stacked and stored together? Somehow I am reminded of the cramped conditions of my first apartment whenever seeing the awkwardly tight shot, which always frames the actors, directors and other lovers of film as they appear in the American distribution company Criterion Collection's ongoing YouTube series of "Closet Picks". A single camera. A single person. A closet with shelves going from floor to ceiling filled with DVDs. Plus a single tote bag with the Criterion Collection logo on the side, and the task that the invited guest has been given: to fill it up with DVDs and tell why these films are important to them. This strange sense of awe - and equal measures of all things prosaic and magic - in a tiny room that is yet containing the masters from the history of movie making. The cinematic universe that each one of these films make up are here reduced to the title on the spine of the DVDs. There are no clips, nothing leaving this room, this moment and the words of the person telling you their story - then putting the DVD into the bag, getting up on their toes as they reach for another one of their favourites, with the words "Oh, and yes …" and a smile as they show the cover to the camera. What is hidden is almost everything, and what is revealed is merely why these films matter to someone. Yet it invites the concept: "Imagine that there are 1000 rooms much bigger than the one we are in."

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Nina Beier (b. 1975 Aarhus, Denmark) lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark). Beier's sculpture "Women & Children"- a fountain composed of bronze sculptures weeping from their eyes- was recently on view at The High Line in New York as a part of their 2022 commissionseries. Selected solo exhibitions include "Housebroken", Kunsthal Gent, Belgium, "European Interiors", Spike Island, Bristol, UK; "Cash for Gold" at Kunstverein Hamburg, Germany; "Nina Beier" at Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, Lithuania, amongst others. Her work has been included in group shows at Pinacoteca Agnelli, Turin; Malmö Konstmuseum, Sweden; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Nouveau Musée National de Monaco, Monaco; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Tate Modern, London; CCA Wattis, San Francisco; Musée d'Art Moderne, Paris; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin.

Beier will open her fifth solo exhibition with STANDARD (OSLO) in late September of this year. Beier will be the subject three major institutional solos in the first half of 2024, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, Kiasma, Helsinki and CAPC - Museum of Contemporary Art, Bordeaux.

Julia Rommel (b. 1980, Salisbury, Maryland) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Recent solo exhibitions include "Just a Splash", STANDARD (OSLO), Oslo; "Uncle", Bureau, New York; "Fall Guy", STANDARD (OSLO); "Two Italians, Six Lifeguards", The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefeld, Connecticut; "Candy Jail", Bureau, New York; "Twin Bed", Bureau at Tanya Leighton; "A Cheesecake With Your Name On It", Overduin & Co. Recent group exhibition include Whitechapel Gallery, London, Flag Art Foundation, New York, Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee. Her works are included in the collection of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; The MetropolitanMuseum of Art, New York, Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.

Simona Runcan (1942-2007), lived and worked in Bucharest, Romania, and Paris, France. She received her education from the Nicolae Grigorescu Fine Arts Institute in Bucharest, where she graduated from the Graphics Department in 1966. She returned to the same school in 1989, then renamed as National University of Arts, as a teacher at the Fashion Design and Art Pedagogy Departments. Throughout her practice as an artist, she was taking part in exhibitions in Romania and abroad, including Simeza Gallery, Bucharest, Romania; Charlottenborg Kunsthal, Copenhagen, Denmark; Groninger Museum, Groningen, Netherlands; as well as two exhibitions in Norway, at Galleri Norske Grafkere (1977) and the Norwegian International Print Biennale in Fredrikstad in Norway (1980). In 2016 the "Palatele Brâncovenești" Cultural Centre in Mogoșoaia, Romania, hosted the very first retrospective exhibition dedicated to Simona Runcan's works and published a monograph on the occasion.

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Photography Simon Vogel