The Manipulate the World – Connecting Öyvind Fahlström group exhibition is on at Stockholm’s Moderna Museet, opening October 19 and running to January 21.

Curated by Fredrik Liew with Goldin + Senneby, the show includes work by 28 artists including Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Harun Farocki, Candice Lin, Jonas Staal, Hito Steyerl, Öyvind Fahlström, Sondra Perry and Pratchaya Phinthong, among others.

Over two floors of the large museum, works that both “explore and challenge Öyvind Fahlström’s ideas on manipulation and theatricality” will fill the space and be in conversation with each other. This also includes four pieces by Fahlström including a series of paintings Is the world a playing field? (1960’s), large installation The theatrical in motion (1964-66) video ‘Actions in public space between the levels’ (1966) and large sculpture ‘World Bank as the centre of a hidden zone’ (1971).

Visit the Moderna Museet website for details.**

Öyvind Fahlström, ‘World Bank’ (1971) Installation view. courtesy the artist + Sidney Janis Gallery, New York.

Les ruses de l’intelligence (‘The Stratagems of the Intellect’), which ran from October 10 to December 13, 2015, at Parc Saint Léger in France, brought together a group of artists including Harun Farocki, Jeremy Deller & Alan Kane, Gianni Motti, and SUPERFLEX among others. The premise of the exhibition focused on the idea of ‘work’ and explored the definition, effects and convention of the word in the context of our globalised economy and the power politics associated with the current financial model.

The artists responded to the increasingly abstract idea of work and how value is defined. The title of the show is a reference to a book by Marcel Détienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant, translated to English as Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society, which questions the established order of stratagems and the know-how models behind practical forms of intelligence. Working across sculpture, photography, neon, books, and other object assemblage, the installation brings together varied relationships to ‘artmaking’ and the economics of the art world that is undergoing rapid change.

Les ruses de l'intelligence (2015) Exhibition view. Courtesy Parc Saint Léger, Paris. — *Les ruses de l’intelligence* (2015). Exhibition view. Courtesy Parc Saint Léger, Paris.

Farocki, Deller & Kane, and Jean-Luc Moulène, look specifically at industry and disappearance, while SUPERFLEX and Pratchaya Phinthong focus their attention on collapse and the financial crisis. Julien Prévieux takes a personal approach to the consequential situation, addressing his reasons for not entering into the world of business in ‘Lettres de non-motivatio’ (2015). Allen Ruppersberg, Mladen Stilinović and Patricio Gil Flood, look at leisure time and the ways we fill our time in contrast to time spent working. The back-and-forth energy of production and reception is articulated in the objects of Eva Barto, Stefan Brüggemann, Ève Chabanon. An overall anxiety works its way through the pieces, stringing them together in their shared desire to reorganise and understand our commitment to the sphere of art.**

Exhibition photos, top right.

The Les ruses de l’intelligence group exhibition was on at Paris’s Parc Saint Leger, running October 10 to December 13, 2015.

Pratchaya Phinthong

World banks + hidden zones in Manipulate the World – Connecting Öyvind Fahlström group show, Oct 19 – Jan 21

Les ruses de l’intelligence (2015) exhibition photos

The Les ruses de l’intelligence group exhibition was on at Paris’s Parc Saint Leger, running October 10 to December 13, 2015.

Header image: Les ruses de l’intelligence (2015) Exhibition view. Courtesy Parc Saint Léger, Paris.