Gunilla Klingberg (b. 1966, Stockholm) presents a series of works in the installation When Stillness Culminates There is Movement at the Uijae Museum in the Mudeungsan Mountain National Park area. This comprises a vinyl cut-out moon-cycle pattern applied on the windows of the museum, filtering the incoming sunlight thus creating a raster of light-projections in the space.
At the museum entrance a solar-powered green LED sign with seven horizontal bars charges during the daytime and is fully lit at sunset. In the main hallway of the museum one passes through a bamboo curtain sculpture hanging from the ceiling, falling in a wave-like structure through the atrium, which leads us down to the display of cyanotype sun prints made at local saju (fortune-teller) shops.
These works are largely influenced by the artist’s research about Pungsu – the Korean form of geomancy – applied for the development of territorial planning and the construction of sovereign buildings. Klingberg’s research about Pungsu comes as an iteration of her longstanding interest in the application of cosmology and superstition to quotidian material culture. The cyanotype sun prints, for example, were made by applying sun-sensitive photographic paper to the storefronts of Gwangju fortune-tellers, where the sunlight registered the local window advertisements.
In her practice Klingberg recurrently employs diverse media and a complete spatial approach. For instance the installation Brand New View (2014) at Malmo Konsthall, where a series of vinyl cut-out mandala patterns made of brand names from local convenience stores were applied to the windows, or the installation Parallelareal Variable (2013) at Eastside Projects, Birmingham, where a set of mechanic ball-chain curtains demarcating the grid of geophysical energies choreographed a ballet of shadows involving the visitor.
Klingberg’s extreme sensibility to energy as a currency flow circulating around us is attuned with the rhythms of the cosmos and the pace of nature, while recognizing the ritual and the spiritual in the private and ordinary, as well as the entanglement of these spheres with the most central workings of capitalism. MM
self-presentation:
Reading: Currently I am reading When the Moon Waxes Red, by Trinh T Minh Ha, whilst making my new work for the GB. This incredible collection of essays was given to me by my friend curator/writer Theodor Ringborg for inspiration.
Other influential reading for recent works has been J.G. Ballard’s The Crystal World and Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino.
Travel: A long journey to Northern India—Rishikesh, Benares, Dharamsala—during my art studies in the early ’90s, when I felt an urge to leave the studio and instead travel while studying.
Living in Berlin in the early ’00s had a great impact as well.
Music: Live concerts by Le Tigre, Sonic Youth, Hope Sandoval, PJ Harvey.
Space: Non-profit space Ynglingagatan 1 in Stockholm, which we ran collectively in the ’90s. The aim was to create an inspiring context for local and international artists.
Other: Yoga practice and the early yoga sutras texts, again and again.
