KÜNSTLERHAUS

BETHANIEN

Künstler*innen

Oscar Enberg

New Zealand

Imagination Dead Imagine (lilt for tenor and Jean Arp electric guitar), 2015, installation, various material, 2 x 4,50 x 1,20 m overall, Courtesy Hopkinson Mossman, Auckland

In Oscar Enberg’s work multiple (often prototypical) characters and storylines from film, literature, art and social histories, are abstracted and synthesized into sculpture.

In recent projects, Enberg has explored the role that chance, risk and luck plays in economic systems. Narratives of speculation, boom and bust, how fortunes are made and lost, are mined for both allegorical qualities and their specific material vocabulary.

Enberg’s sculptures are assemblages that combine often anachronistic methods of production. Hand woven willow baskets, carved ivory corkscrews, blown and stained glass and tapestry sit alongside found ephemeram, specific to each project. Traditional craftspeople and products from a more volatile, fast-moving economy, cartooning the precarious dynamics at play.

STAY
15.10.2016 – 15.10.2017