Scene Shifts

Bonniers Konsthall’s main autumn exhibition is the group show Scene Shifts – a meeting between art and theatre. The exhibition is a unique collaboration with Dramaten& (Royal Dramatic Theatre) and joins leading international artists with Sweden’s best known actors. During three intense months, the exhibition will continuously give rise to new works and performances – both in Bonniers Konsthall’s galleries at Torsgatan and on Dramaten’s stages at Nybroplan.

Scene Shifts will discuss the interest for theatre displayed by contemporary artists. The exhibition presents works by 15 artists who work in the interface of performance, theatre, film, sculpture, painting and drawing. The participating artists come from different parts of the world and they all belong to a new generation of internationally renowned artists. In collaboration with Dramaten actors including Björn Granath and Johan Rabaeus, the artists will create works especially for the exhibition at Bonniers Konsthall and Dramaten.

In Scene Shifts, mechanical theatre meets musical movies, and cutting-edge contemporary art walks hand in hand with Shakespeare. Artist Pablo Bronstein, in collaboration with three Dramaten actors, will produce a performance with tragic endings borrowed from world drama, while artist Kirstine Roepstorff will use well-known voices in her installation Silent Theatre. As a part of the exhibition, artist Ylva Ogland’s version of Ingmar Bergman’s model of Dramaten’s main stage will be shown. For the exhibition, the artist will also produce a gigantic puppet that will dance on the national stage. In addition, we will be treated to Ragnar Kjartansson’s vocal items à la Frank Sinatra and Gabriela Fridriksdottir’s dreamy dance performance.

The exhibition aims to be a space that enables an encounter between contemporary art and theatre. Here, artists who work with changing and mobile works, which do not fit into traditional exhibitions, will be provided with an opportunity to be seen and find their audience.

Contemporary art’s interest in the theatre may be seen as a reflection of our time, when the guiding principle of culture is visibility and spectacle. However, the participating artists’ theatrical experiments are also about opening a door to fiction’s possibilities, providing the dramatic art with a space for a play of identities and roles, exploring the unique presence of physical bodies, words, gestures and movements.

The exhibition will be constantly changing and offer new performances and shows, both at Bonniers Konsthall and at Dramaten. A full programme with a complete list of participants will be presented in the autumn.

The collaboration between Bonniers Konsthall and Dramaten& started already in autumn 2009 with the artist Aurélien Froment’s well-received performance Le chiffre à la lettre (Code Countdown) in which the actor Johan Holmberg played the single role. The intensified collaboration of Scene Shifts began on 17 March this year with the seminar Samtidskonst på scen (Contemporary Art on Stage).

Curator: Sara Arrhenius