Matts Leiderstam: Seen from Here
Kunsthalle Düsseldorf
Grabbeplatz 4
March 20–May 30, 2010
Malmö Konsthall
St Johannesgatan 7
Box 17 127
June 13–August 22, 2010
Turku Art Museum
Aurakatu 26
October 1, 2010–January 16, 2011
Curated by Ulrike Groos and Christoph Benjamin Schulz
Matts Leiderstam’s exhibitions generate historical and visual networks as seductive as they are complex—forms of entanglement here incarnated in fifteen or so series. Take this show’s central work, Neanderthal Landscape, 2009–10: Based on the artist’s research in local archives, museums, and related sites, the installation traces the history of mid-nineteenthcentury Düsseldorf School painting and filters it through slide projections, computer animations, optical instruments, and the artist’s own paintings and drawings, producing delicate deconstructions of the gaze and its habitual parceling up of nature and body. An accompanying catalogue involves the neighboring fiveinstitution “Schirmer Project 2010,” an examination of Düsseldorf School pillar Johann Wilhelm Schirmer.