Frieze Art Fair, London, 2011: ”Destroy Restore”, Carl Hammoud

Galleri Magnus Karlsson is proud to announce it's participation at The Frieze Art Fair for the eighth consecutive year.

This year the gallery will show works by Carl Hammoud, an artist who often explore themes such as order vs chaos, and who's most previous solo exhibitions includes 'Polygraph', a tour of Gothenburg Museum of Art, Malmö Art Museum and Kalmar Konstmuseum.

Hammoud will present a project entitled 'Destroy Restore', consisting of a series of paintings, drawings and an object.
As the title suggest, the work focuses on the idea of history as a continuous loop, where what is destroyed is restored and vice versa.

'Destroy Restore' is based on the experiences of an incident earlier this year when a sculpture, included in a museum exhibition tour, was damaged. The restoration was assigned to the artist and it was at this point that questions of change, of the difference between restoration and renovation, were raised.
Outlined by current political events, as well as by the metaphysics of painting, Hammoud employs the idea of the present as a result of an incomplete historical movement reconciling with it's opposite.

Inspired by the ideas of German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, who defines a system as "a zone of reduced complexity", Hammoud investigates our social structures, indicating a recurring pattern in which unexpected events distort the system, only to have us pick up the pieces and try to put them back together again - to recreate a realm in which the endless chaos of the exterior is excluded - and to regain control.

But as we confront the moment of distortion, with the case of the damaged sculpture in mind, another suggestion emerges: changing the course of history is possible when the present state is broken.

Much like Luhmann's definition, the works are in themselves zones of reduced complexity. Even though the compositions are sometimes chaotically arranged, the depicted objects are stripped of detail, branding and other trademarks. They are in a sense 'distilled' to bring out the essence of Hammoud's painterly statements.

Carl Hammoud, born 1976, lives and works in Stockholm. His work is represented in the collections of Moderna Museet, Magasin 3, Gothenburg Museum of Art and Malmö Art Museum among others, and with private collectors around the world.

At the fair the gallery will also present a selection of new works by gallery artists, such as Maria Nordin, Amy Cutler, Sara-Vide Ericson, Niklas Eneblom, Jockum Nordström and Marcel Dzama.