Oliver Croy and Henrikke Nielsen founded Croy Nielsen in Berlin in 2008. In 2017 they relocated to Vienna, where the gallery is situated in a historical building. The program includes several Nordic artists, who had their first gallery exhibitions at Croy Nielsen, such as Marie Lund, Nina Beier, Birke Gorm, and Sandra Mujinga.
For this year’s edition of CHART, Croy Nielsen are pleased to present new works by Birke Gorm (DE/DK), Marie Lund (DK), and Sandra Mujinga (CD/NO).
Birke Gorm, All-in (no check, dark blue), Textile, terracotta, metal, 2023
Sandra Mujinga, Lack #890, Inkjet print on canson platine, 2022
Marie Lund Plies, Copper, glass enamel, bronze, rubber, 2021
Sandra Mujinga (NO)
Sandra Mujinga’s practice is concerned with visibility and the avoidance of surveillance or capture. Drawing on Afrofuturist fiction and posthuman thought, several recent works have imagined speculative worlds in which hybrid characters have adopted technologies and techniques from forms of non-human life, such as nocturnality, mutability and camouflage, in order to evade threat or to simply live comfortably. In Mujinga’s work, the black body refuses coherent visual representation and instead exists in a state of constant rendering and disappearance.
Sandra Mujinga (b. 1989, Congo) lives and works between Oslo and Berlin. Recent and upcoming solo exhibitions include: Swiss Institute, New York; Göteborgs Konstmuseum (both 2021); Vleeshal, Middleburg (2020); Bergen Kunsthall (2019). Recent and upcoming group shows include New Museum Triennial, New York; ICA, Los Angeles; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (all 2021) and Kunstverein Hannover (2020).
Lack #67, edition of 3 plus II AP
Inkjet print on canson platine 2022
Courtesy of the artist and Croy Nielsen. Photo by Oystein Thorvaldsen
Collecting archaic, easily accessible, often accidentally found material such as jute, terracotta, wood, and metal is characteristic of the work of Birke Gorm. Her sculptures convey a raw, appealing immediacy whose multilayered levels of meaning can be decoded upon closer inspection. By re-appropriating domestic labour processes — acts that have historically connoted unpaid work by women — the artist shows the enormous potential, contained in the production and circulation of everyday objects, for the dismantling of patriarchal gender hierarchies.
Birke Gorm (b. 1986, Hamburg — Lives and works in Vienna). Recent solo and duo exhibitions include 'dead stock' at MAK, Vienna (2023); Martina Simeti, Milan (w. Marie Lund); and 'Full stop' at Politikens Forhal, Copenhagen (2021). Upcoming and recent group exhibitions include Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin; Museum Sønderjylland, Tønder (both 2023); mumok, Vienna; Schirn Kunsthal, Frankfurt am Main, and Kunsthalle Vienna (all 2022).
Marie Lund’s artistic practice arrives from a contemplation of the interdependencies between architectural space, objects, and bodies. Her sculptural works hold references to existing, functional objects, which she transforms through tensile material processes into abstract sculptural structures. Often situated in relation to ideas of liminal space, and resisting notions that sculptures exist as autonomous objects, Lund’s works outline and activate their environment, pre-empting encounters between bodies and the spaces that surround them. Foregrounding ideas of hosting and openness, space is approached as something given, rather than something to be merely occupied. Accordingly, Lund’s sculptures resonate as social as well as spatial frameworks, fostering forms of mutual dependency within the exhibition formats where they appear.
Marie Lund (b. 1976, Copenhagen; DK) lives and works in Copenhagen (DK). Recent exhibitions of Lund’s work include Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, St. Gallen (CH); Holstebro Kunstmuseum, Holstebro (DK); Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe (DE); Goldsmith CCA, London (UK); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (FR); Tate Britain, London (UK). Recent publications include ‘The Falling,’ After 8 Books, 2022; and ‘Scout,’ MIDI/Mousse, 2016.