Kunsthal Aarhus: UHHI Projects: The Tabulator Project (Open Call 2016)

The Tabulator Project is a collective exhibition project featuring eight contributing artists, developed around a concept by the Copenhagen based artist group UHHI Projects consisting of Lise Uhrskov and Mazja Hillestrøm.

The project explores how artists can co-author an exhibition by playing a textual game. In this experiment the first artist begins by writing a short text, which is then sent on to the next artist by pressing the tabulator key – "TAB". This procedure is repeated by the next artists, thus creating a collectively made exhibition text from which each artist creates their works for the exhibition. The result is an exhibition that oscillates between individual voices and collective making.

Participating artists:
Nana Rosenørn Holland Bastrup, Jacob Borges, Michael Boelt Fischer, Lea Guldditte Hestelund, Mazja Hillestrøm, Daniel Seferian Spies, Kristian Touborg and Lise Uhrskov.

The Tabulator Project is selected from Open Call 2016: COLLECTIVE MAKING – Artists Associations, an initiative that addresses the theme of Kunsthal Aarhus’ artistic programme for 2015-2016.

Opening: 29 April, 5pm
Exhibition period: 29 April–29 May 2016
Opening performance: author Morten Søndergaard

UHHI Projects curates and arrange exhibitions and events, and creates collaborative art work. UHHI Projects consists of the two artists Mazja Hillestrøm and Lise Uhrskov, who executed the idea behind The Tab Project. Afterwords they invited six great artist to join them in the making of the exhibition. Previous exhibitions by UHHI Projects: Imprint and Girls Just Want To Have Fun.

Lise Uhrskov (b. 1974) is educated from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Design. Uhrskov works with items she finds at home or in the street like paper clips, rubber bands, or other everyday things, that she uses to create her work. The selected items are stacked, piled and arranged into a new abstract universe of geometry where gravity is repealed. Her works has been shown at Charlottenborgs Forårsudstilling 2014 and Kunstnernes Efterårsudstilling 2015.

Mazja Hillestrøm (b. 1976) is educated from Akademie der Bildenden Kunst, Vienna, and Konsthögskolan i Malmö. She lives and works in Copenhagen. In her art practice Hillestrøm is reconciling the brutal with the gentle, visualising feeling and temperament. The result is often imaginative worlds that are both a message of manifesto and aesthetic enjoyment. Her work have been exhibited at remap in Athens and KP – Kunstnernes Påskeudstilling (The Artists Easter Exhibition) at Kunsthal Aarhus.

Daniel Seferian Spies (b. 1990) is a Danish born artist, currently studying a MFA at Malmö Art Academy, from where he has graduated with a BFA. His work primarily consists of installations which explore and reflect on various philosophical, scientific and cultural ideas – often combined with a subtle wit. By the employment of various mediums and materials in the installations, a certain atmosphere of mis-en-scene usually alludes to a narrational process of the concepts in play.

Jacob Borges works are often minimalistic, understated and filled with melancholic humor. Text is his primary medium, preferably directly at the walls in an exhibition room. Jacob Borges finds inspiration in everyday considerations, popular culture and tribulations of masculinity. Jacob Borges uses texts and readymades conceptually as an intimate space for a study of his own insecurities and the strange rules we as a society put up for ourselves and each other. An example is his exhibition Der Stadtneurotiker where he, through text, photographs and found objects, thematizes the living conditions and hardships of modern man.

Michael Boelt Fischer is a Danish artist based in Copenhagen. His practice deals with the conceptual possibilities of the artwork and its possible physical configurations; configurations in which any combination of visual imagery, materiality and information is subject to new image-formations, thus creating new works of art. Using the collage as the basic means of production and displacement, repetition and juxtaposition as artistic tools, Boelt Fischer is interested in creating an open-ended artwork, and finding new ways of staging ”void” without the artwork pointing in a specific semantic or art historic direction. Recent exhibitions include Mix It Up! at SMK Statens Museum for Kunst and Mixtape at Sydhavn Station, Copenhagen.

Lea Guldditte Hestelund deals with the collective body of Western society in her work, and how and to what extend it affects and creates our private bodies. Her sculptures and installations are most often made in traditional materials such as marble, plaster and bronze combined with materials, that you would normally find in other industries and environments. Furthermore Hestelund also works with and use her own body as a sculptural material. In a mix of references to both Ancient Greek and contemporary pop-culture, she tries to balance questions about ideals and gender, as well as our bodies being symbols of power and potential carriers of meaning.

Kristian Touborg (b. 1987, Roskilde) lives and works in Copenhagen. He has a Master of Arts from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Design in Copenhagen. Touborg works with painting, relief, sculpture, installation and video. His works have been shown in solo and group exhibitions in Denmark and abroad. Including Copenhagen (Galerie Mikael Andersen), Aarhus (Galleri Jacob Bjørn), London (Beers Contemporary) and art fairs in Los Angeles and New York, plus at the Danish juried exhibitions, including Den Frie, where he in 2013 received the first price. Touborg also received Amdrupprisen in 2010 and Nordea Art Prize 2009.

Nana Rosenørn Holland Bastrup (b. 1987 in Copenhagen, DK). She graduated from the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg in 2015. Currently, she lives and works as an artist in Berlin, Germany. Since 2009, she has mainly worked with used product packaging – covering smaller cardboard masks as well as large expansive installations. The themes include advertising, consumption and recycling. She creates her work by either stacking collected cardboard boxes or assembling fragmented packaging waste. The works are comments to excessive consumption, individual choice and loss of overview in the flood of images and texts. Recent exhibitions include Kunsthal Aarhus (Aarhus, Denmark), Den Frie Udstillingsbygning (Copenhagen, Denmark) and Altonaer Museum (Hamburg,Germany).