KRISTIANSAND.- Grand Prix is an exhibition, an experiment and a game about the society in which we live, by the Danish artist Pelle Brage. Brage invites us to enter a world of sculptures, installations, costumes and other things, inciting us to get involved and play, maybe even come up with new ideas about what our society can be. What kind of game do you want to play? And what kind of life do you want to live? In Grand Prix there’s no one way of doing anything.
Everything revolves around a big brown sculpture, a lump of dirt, or a grotto if you like. Other sculptural elements are a big smiley-sun, colorful clouds, ‘the director’s car’ and ‘the society hamburger’. Children and grown-ups can play in a small factory filling bottles with SKMU-water, or go about the exhibition collecting wooden vegetables and lumps of gold. There’s also a ping-pong table, a lounge area and a war zone where children can shoot NERF-guns. A Super Host will give you challenges and invite you to do various experiments or create a model of your own dream land.
With Grand Prix, Pelle Brage wants to find out whether art’s materials and aesthetics can contribute to something other than political debate. In our effort to achieve climate balance, or in our struggle to solve problems through discussions and politics, have we forgot something? It’s time to bring art into these efforts, with all its energy, fantasy and unpredictable magic. What possibilities can arise from a family trying to solve the world’s problems with a lump of dirt as a starting point? Could it possibly lead to a new type of love emerging and spreading throughout society?
During the exhibition period, there will be an extensive program of performances, infotainment, musical seances, art duels and workshops, all of which add to the content of the exhibition and address different questions.
Pelle Brage (b. 1978, DK) lives and works near Kristiansand, Norway. He studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen during 1999–2005. He co-founded the Danish artist group Parfyme and has developed many social art projects, interventions and exhibitions, in Denmark and internationally.
In Grand Prix, Pelle Brage collaborates with the artist Julia Bruun and their children Ariel, Buster, Bjørn, Frøya and Alvin, the theater instructor Jeppe Kristensen, the musician Filip Ring Tenderup, the composer Anders Lauge Meldgaard and the orchestra År og dag, Urban Bergstrøm, PhD in urban planning Mikaela Vasström, Mike Troxel, Eivind Vigsnes, the film maker Paul M. Lundø, and SKMU’s curator Karl Olav Segrov Mortensen.
