Take a Contemporary Art Trip with Nina Beier
Croy Nielsen Showing Nina Beier
Standard Oslo, Nina Beier Works
(Thanks to Marlene Sharoff)
Nina Beier
Posted by Marlene Sarroff on Monday, March 30, 2020
ARTIST: Nina Beier, “Empire” 2019
Nina Beier tackles some messy copies and creates some others herself. Pieces of collectable porcelain dinnerware inhabit birdcages that imitate man-made architecture. Installed on the gallery’s parquet flooring, the antique china doesn’t seem out of place in this formerly domestic space. Each hand-painted plate or vessel belongs to a series called Empire that was produced by Royal Copenhagen. Porcelain ceramics imported from China became coveted status symbols in Europe as early as the 14th century. They were quickly and widely copied, yet European craftspeople couldn’t match the quality of Chinese exports for another nearly 400 years.
By placing things into an uneasy state of cohabitation, Beier causes them to become more honestly themselves – as if an exhibition could also be group therapy for wayward commodities. Whether this is the case for the art dealer surrounded by paintings of himself is harder to say, but the short circuiting of the dynamic between a gallerist and the works they exhibit reveals something interesting about the machinations of art.
Excerpt: – Patrick Armstrong