Past exhibition at Lumiar Cité:

LARS-ANDREAS TOVEY KRISTIANSEN
you don’t need a weatherman to know
which way the wind blows
02.06-27.06.2010

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Press-Release
Exhibition View

The project, which will be presented in a solo exhibition at Lumiar Cité (meaning illuminated or glowing city) will, prior to the exhibition period, consist of a process in which the artist builds a four-meter high home-made wind generator with skills acquired from manuals from the internet.
The wind generator will be mobile and moved around the area where the gallery is situated, generating electricity using the wind and storing it in batteries that will be regularly transported to the gallery and in turn used to power the lights of the gallery ceiling. This process of gathering electricity will continue throughout the exhibition period. When the generator is not being used it will be on display in the gallery.
The project is a site-specific process intervening in the public space of Alta de Lisboa, an urban renewal project initiated in the 80s by converting slums into a new "city" within the capitol, consisting of housing, shops, green spaces, amenities, office spaces and social housing.
The exhibition title, 'you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,' refers to Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues, a slogan also used by the Weather Underground Organization (also called the Weathermen).

Lars-Andreas Tovey Kristiansen



Lars-Andreas Tovey Kristiansen has recently developed a series of projects that reveal an interest reminiscent of the Russian constructivists’ search for a utopian unity of the social, the political and the cultural. In shifting these questions to the present, Kristiansen reflects on the morphological, psychological and historical fractures caused by the developments of contemporary society.
Kristiansen is driven by a curiosity towards human drama, carefully observing the predicaments and inconsistencies of our being. The subject matters of his work emerge from the artist’s own reflections on his surroundings and meticulous research aiming to disclose and challenge one-sided interpretations of history.
Most of Kristiansen’s work is research-based, sewing together different elements, offering the viewer multiple gateways to the stories narrated. In other words, by resurrecting events from different times to negotiate them in a contemporary context, Kristiansen triggers a range of readings, simultaneously unmasking the inherent fragility of traditional "good versus bad" perspectives.
Kristiansen uses a multidisciplinary approach to the development of his projects, seeking solutions in different areas of knowledge production and engaging in whatever self- teaching processes become necessary for the work to succeed. However, faithful to an artistic discourse deriving from modernity, Lars-Andreas Tovey Kristiansen’s work goes beyond an explanatory function towards a utopian-like narrative, which tends to imagine solutions, even if only possible in the realm of (utopian) fiction.
Kristiansen develops artistic practice as an endless search, an act of resistance against 'the end of imagination'1. His commitment to a practice based on context-specific situations ensures his relevance as an artist in the very specific context of the Maumaus Lumiar Cité Gallery in Lisbon.


Vera Lúcia Carmo




Lars-Andreas Tovey Kristiansen (*1983, Halden, Norway) lives and works in Braunschweig, Germany and Malmö, Sweden. Currently participating in the International Artists in Residence Programme at Maumaus, Lisbon. In 2009 he was awarded a grant by OCA - Office for Contemporary Art Norway. His exhibitions include: The Art of Speculation, Kunstverein Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg, Germany (2010); Information Wants to Be Free, Platform One Gallery, London, UK (2009) and A Public Affair, Galleri 21, Malmö, Sweden (2008). He is one of the founders and directors of Landings, Vestfossen, Norway, an exhibition space programmed by artists.