15 January - 20 February, 2005
Lars Bohman Gallery
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Galleri Lars Bohman is proud to present Maria Miesenberger’s third exhibition at the gallery. In this exhibition she presents two new series of works, the sculptures Hide & Seek, and the scotch brite collages Framed Scouringpads.

In the sculpture series Hide & Seek, Maria Miesenberger continues her investigation of how identity is created and shaped. The model for the sculptures is a teenage boy from her own family and she creates a metaphor for coming into existence. A portrayal of the self playing hide and seek with itself and the world around it. A finger print-like pattern meanders over the surface of the aluminium sculptures that, among other things, question how we identify an individual.

In Framed Scouringpads – perhaps Maria Miesenberger’s hitherto most feminist work – the coarse reality of the scotch brite scouring pads, with their associations to ingrained dirt and women’s red hands, is confronted with a vanished ideal in the shape of ornamental jugend patterns from turn of the century Vienna. In these works Miesenberger uses a material that is regarded as worthless, with a woman’s handicraft that is rarely appreciated, to create large images of transformation and conversion.

Maria Miesenberger has been involved in several public art projects. In 2002 the 7.60 m high sculpture Half an Angel was installed at the Norwegian telecommunications company Telenor’s head office in Fornebu, Norway. The sculpture is cast in aluminium and depicts a six year old girl listlessly stretching with one arm behind her head.

The National Public Arts Council Sweden has commissioned the hide and seek playing children in Hide & by to be installed at a square at Växjö University. It will be inaugurated in February.

Maria Miesenberger was born in 1965 and, after a long sojurn in New York, she now lives and works in Stockholm. Since her debut in 1993 she has had several solo exhibitions at museums and galleries, including: Norrköpings Konstmuseum, Norrköping, Sweden; Lunds Konsthall, Lund, Sweden; Passagen Linköping, Sweden; Jönköpings Läns Museum, Jönköping, Sweden; Hasselblad Center, Gothenburg; Robert Mann Gallery, New York; Galerie Anhava, Helsinki and Arnstedt & Kullgren, Östra Karup, Sweden.

Recent group exhibitions both in Sweden and abroad are: Unstable – New directions within Swedish photography, Kulturhuset, Stockholm; Memento, Bror Hjorts Hus, Uppsala; On:Time, Moderna Museet, Stockholm; History Now, Liljevalchs Konsthall, Stockholm; Scandinavian Photography 1:Sweden, Faulconer Gallery, Davenport, USA; Tusenfryd?, Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium, Drammen, Norway and Sculpture Quadrennial 2004, Riga, Lettland.