Dundee Contemporary Arts
March 29th-June 15
Permanent transience is a way of being for Navid Nurr, the
Dutch/Iranian auteur who takes over DCA with an epic array of work that
co-opts the temporary detritus of everyday life into a series of
constructions that provoke as much as they play with the material to
hand. In what he describes as an ongoing set of 'interimodules', a
conflation of 'interim' and 'modules' that defines a state of
impermanence beyond easy pigeon-holing, Nurr utilises an array of
wheelie bins, water coolers, emergency blankets, slide projectors and
the like to make deeply personal expressions riven from a very private
world.
“The art world is the only place where people listen to someone's
personal and private language,” he says.”
For his second ever UK solo show, and his largest in a public space to
date, Nurr presents key works, including 'When doubt turns into
destiny' (1993-2011), a surveillance video in which Nurr attempts to
evade detection by the security lights in Berlin's avenues and
alleyways; and 'City Soil' (2009-2014), a 1,100 litre street bin filled
with the ashes of the rubbish created in the making of the show. These
will sit alongside new work inspired by Dundee and the DCA site itself
as a former hub for the local skate-boarding community, and using found
film footage from the era. As a former skater himself who came out of
the graffiti art scene, Nurr recognises the world all too well.
“I wasn't that good,” he reflects, “but I loved it so much that I
didn't finish high school because of it. It wasn't just about the
tricks, but more about being part of a community. Back in the 90s,
no-one would support it, but when you were skating, you saw the world
from a different angle. Not just the architecture, but at yourself as
well.”
The List, March 2014
ends
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