Tue Greenfort

Vitalismus Mechanismus, 2015

Kunstverin & Stiftung Springhornhof e.V.

Permanent Installation, Neuenkirchen, Germany

Photos by Fred Dott

Vis Vitalis, 2014

Galerie Johann Koenig, Berlin

5.7.–9.8.2014

Photos by Roman März

Courtesy: The Artist and Johann König, Berlin

Press Release:

KÖNIG GALERIE is delighted to present new works by Tue Greenfort in this, his fifth solo exhibition at the Gallery. The works of the Danish artist have, from the outset, shown an ongoing critical concern for our perception of Nature and for themes such as ecology and the handling of natural resources. Aesthetically straightforward and clear in their forms, the works often reflect complex contexts and connections, based on extensive research into a specific place, a particular material, a real condition. In the current exhibition, Tue Greenfort is concerned, for example, with the notion of VIS VITALIS, the force from which life emerges, or the force of life. The artist himself characterizes the exhibition in the following words:
It is by re-thinking the notion of ‘the environment’ – that abstract, divisive term with which we have become so familiar, a term whose exhausted meaning and lack of critical depth open up a possibility of re-framing the problem – that we can perhaps achieve a fundamental paradigm shift.
“The world population has more than doubled in the past 50 years. Countries throughout the world are now facing the challenge of an increasing demand for food, at a time when our society has become more environmentally conscious. Today fertilizers are playing a critical role in supporting worldwide food production, but the raw materials being used and their manufacturing processes are having a negative impact on our environment. The challenges facing the fertilizer industry are quite complex. What we are seeing is that the agricultural food production systems will be challenged with an increased demand for food, and at the same time there will be a loss of production acreage to urban and industrial development. So the fertilizer industry must find new process technologies for increasing fertilizer production worldwide and at the same time protecting the environment.” (Terry R. Collins, Ph.D., P.E. CEO/President BioNitrogen Corp.)
If we maintain our belief in the critical potential of art (for example by operating with local initiatives) we can demonstrate both alternatives to, and forms of critical stance against, the omnipresent economic matrices that threaten life-sustaining systems on a global scale.
Particular images insistently recur in our mind’s eye once we have first seen them, be it because of their composition, a certain facial expression, a puzzling quality, sheer brute repetition or through their capacity to disturb and shock.
Likewise, the media strategically and intentionally reverse engineer these qualities and their sensory affects to induce pathologies within the viewer.
In spite of these tactics, a kind of manipulation-literacy emerges that is aware, wary and weary of the constructive role of such images. Economic and political needs shape so-called public opinion, thereby sustaining a power regime, which presumes itself to be a force for growth but whose primary agenda it is to keep on accumulating material wealth.
Over the past decade, I have sporadically collected newspaper clippings relating to such specific thematic concerns, clippings from which a multitude of tangents reach out, marking out many of the major ecological crises we are faced with in our age.
Some of these themes are profoundly interrelated with conceptions and visions that have crystallized out of pre-enlightenment beliefs and reveal a fascination with ideas and explanatory models circling around life and the life force itself – the doctrine, also known as ‘vitalism’, that there exists a certain force constituting life itself, a force that cannot be made or copied, a vis vitalis. Such superstitious notions became less prevalent following the emergence of the mechanistic Cartesian Weltanschauung, which became a dominant doctrine or modus operandi and, in the name of Reason, closed off the apertures of obscurantist beliefs and animalistic narratives so vital as explanatory models in earlier society.
This overall focus and a range of system studies and resultant productions have led to the related considerations and formations that now constitute the current exhibition. The exhibition, the studies and the ways of thinking are, as it were, enmeshed.

Tue Greenfort

BONAQUA Condensation Cube, 2005/2013

After Hans Haacke’s Condensation Cube, 1965 

Photos: Tue Greenfort

Photos: Roman Maerz

Courtesy the artist and Galerie Johann König, Berlin

Exceeding 2°C, 2007/2014

Still Life: Art, Ecology and the Politics of change,

Sharjah Biennial 8, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, 2007

7 000 000 000, EACC, Castellon, Spain, 2014

31 January - 27 April, 2014

The climate inside the Sharjah Art Museum is controlled by an air-conditioning system. By raising the temperature by 2°C in the entire museum for the duration of the Biennial “Still Life: Art, Ecology and the Politics of Change”, less energy will be consumed. Using an approximation of the amount of money thereby saved on electricity, a rainforest area in Ecuador has been purchased through the environmental organisation Nepenthes.

For the exhibition “7 000 000 000,” at the EACC, the temperature of the exhibition space has been lowered by 2°C for the duration of the exhibition. The money saved on heating costs has been used to purchase an area of Ecuadorian rainforest through the NGO Accionatura.  

Courtesy the artist and Galerie Johann König, Berlin 

Garbage Bay, 2013

SculptureCenter, New York

November 10, 2013 - January 27, 2014

Photos by Tue Greenfort

Photos by Jason Mandella

Photos by Katrin Riegler

Courtesy the artist and Galerie Johann König, Berlin

Kaviar Bar, 2007

Installation view: Medusa, Secession, Vienna, 2007

20.9. - 18.11.2007

Photos by Ulrich Dertschei

Photos by Tue Greenfort

Courtesy the artist and Galerie Johann König, Berlin

Medusa

Secession Vienna

20.9. - 18.11.2007

Photos by Ulrich Dertschei

Photos by Tue Greenfort

Courtesy the artist and Galerie Johann König, Berlin

KLÄRUNG / CLARIFICATION, EMSCHERKUNST.2013

22 June - 6 October 2013

Duisburg, former Kleine Emscher purification plant, administration building; a water archive project and initiation of a global dialogue on water, 2013-ongoing.

Klärung (Clarificiation) is a multi-part project aimed at creating a dialogue about water and its wider cultural and social implications. In it, water is broadly considered not only as drinking water and the wider freshwater ecosystems, but also as a field of aesthetic and ethical contention. Landscapes like the Ruhr region—especially the Emscher River area—have seen radical environmental change through industrialization, and are now experiencing yet another structural change as various entities strive for its Renaturierung (renaturation).

EMSCHERKUNST, with its focus on commissioning large-scale public art projects, is part of this restorative effort. Klärung (Clarificiation) looks at the structural change promoted by these endeavors, and the perceptions of nature it implies.

The enormity of this undertaking has made it a political buzzword for progressive environmental policy-making in action. Called the largest land restoration project in Europe, it represents a milestone of environmental, sustainable, coherent, civic, and socially beneficial change for this region, making it a cleaner and more attractive living environment and therefore also a more attractive place for the new, post-capitalist economy to invest, grow, and develop. Given the extreme toxicity of this central European landscape, the need for this change is undeniable; the Emscher River is meanwhile characterized as a gridded canal system—an open sewer colloquially known as ‘Kloake’ (Köttelbecke).

This water environment holds other dangers for the region. Some residential areas lie as much as thirty meters below the riverbed, and without a complex system of pumps, canals, and treatment facilities, Germany’s most densely-populated region would flood and become uninhabitable. The history of water management in this region is represented by the Emschergenossenschaft (Emscher Cooperative)—a non-profit, regional government and private sector cooperation. Its historical role and recent environmental responsibilities have become central to the project presented here.

Visits to the proposed sites for EMSCHERKUNST.2013 led to a semi-inoperative sewage treatment facility that was closed in 1999. The initial idea for the project was to use one of these facilities’ water-treatment basins as a water archive and water pavilion that would allow an audience to reflect upon their local relationship to water via a global perspective. It would transform this basin into a contemplative situation where one can experience the structural richness of water itself, and serve as an example of our fundamental relationship to water. This initiative stands out as a central part of the project.

For the duration of EMSCHERKUNST.2013, the administrative and energy-production units of the treatment facility buildings are being re-activated with media including multi-channel video installations, a collection of water samples and a research space that enables the audience to browse www.neitherwastenorwater.net, a website created especially for this water archive initiative. The samples have been gathered and catalogued by a vast global network of collaborators mostly from regions facing water conflicts, as well as fresh water systems, which today, are threatened by structural changes similar to those that once so radically altered the Emscher region.

The ambition behind the project is to raise fundamental questions regarding the epistemological and ontological foundations of today’s relationship to and perception of water. How do we understand and negotiate water management and water quality at large? Parameters around the notion of ‘clean water’ are constantly being revised to suit political and economic interests, and these parameters dictate how this notion is generally understood on a global scale. The project also points to fundamental ethical questions surrounding water policies for a common good, such as the essential notion of available, clean, safe, and sustainable drinking water for all human beings.

Tue Greenfort