Öyvind Fahlström

Öyvind Fahlström, was born in São Paulo in 1928, grew up and studied in Sweden, and from 1961 until his death mainly lived and worked in New York. In the early sixties, Fahlström developed his idea of the open artwork whose unlimited multitude of changeable interrelationships between pictorial and sign-like elements emphasize the aspect of language and time art. In this installations, he presents different strategies of variability by using different sources: the imagery of cartoons, documentary and fictional pictures from the mass media, or political facts. Since the artist does not present his work completed, the artwork becomes a game and the viewer becomes a player. With this concept, Fahlström aims at breaking up the normative conventions and holding out the prospect of a possible experimental alternation of reality. Through this links his position to the mood for the new departures in the sixties, his art is of a surprising topicality and probably can only be valued today - on the basis of our knowledge of more recent developments in art - in all its originality. This catalogue is the first major publication produced in Germany on the artist and focuses on five installations and related texts by the artist. Mike Kelley's essay, which is the result of a long and thorough analysis of Fahlström's art, is an important contribution to the evaluation of Fahlström's oeuvre.