Adolf Loos is currently having seizures in his grave: his 1907
masterpiece in Vienna, the Kärtner
Bar, is now simply a trashy
American bar, and Loos’s rigour
has been devoured by drunken after-
hours businessmen. Just a few
hundred miles away in Copenhagen,
at the newly opened Karriere
bar and restaurant, the minimalist
theory of “less as more” has been
replaced, or better raped by the
new zeitgeist in contemporary art:
“more is never enough”. Kerriere is
a 680-square-metre dwelling for
the “next” generation of any creative
fields conceived by Jeppe and
Lærke Hein. The two have invited
artists in an orgy of projects to decorate
the new hot spot in the trendy
Copenhagen district of Vesterbro,
the meatpacking area of the city.
The collaborative effort includes
many usual suspects from the
international art world trail along
with some rather unusual names to
create a very healthy balance between
blue-chip, name-dropping
signatures and a personal vision.
The artists invited in the order
are: Franz Ackermann, Kristoffer
Akselbo, AVPD, Kenneth Balfelt
Bank & Rau, Massimo Bartolini,
Monica Bonvicini, Janet Cardiff/
George Bures Miller, Maurizio
Cattelan, Gardar Eide Einarsson,
Olafur Eliasson, Michael Elmgreen
& Ingar Dragset, Ceal Floyer,
FOS, Alicia Framis, Dan Graham,
Tue Greenfort, Douglas Gordon, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Carl Michael von
Hausswolff, Jeppe Hein, Carsten Höller, Jesper
Just, Ernesto Neto, Dan Peterman, Tino Sehgal,
Tomas Saraceno, Claude El Skorrari, Robert
Stadler, Simon Starling, Rirkrit Tiravanija,
Johannes Wohnseifer. The name of the bar could
be read as a celebration of the new spirit of a
younger generation of “creators”: careerism.
In other words every move for a young artist
today is a career move, which does not necessarily
have a negative connotation. Yet we live
in an age of Karrierism where no underground
endeavour is ever very appealing. PR are like
drugs and alcohol in
the Sixties and Seventies,
a very abused
substance among the
experimental players
of today’s contemporary
art and culture
at large. Karriere refl
ects this 21st-century
mood of wealthy
young people who are
very much concerned
with the legitimate
celebration of their
own celebration, a big
leap forward from the
Schnabelism of the
Eighties which is still polluting the art world and
movie environment. On another note, it is worth
mentioning that Karriere, a place not happening
in Manhattan, London or Berlin, is perhaps
a signal that once again, like with Moderna Museet
or the Bern Kunsthalle in the Sixties, the
focus in culture is moving outside the centres to
bloom stronger and younger somewhere else, at
the edges of the empires, offering new perspectives
and opportunities to a more diverse and
less centralised culture.
Karriere Bar & Restaurant
he new venue conceived by Jeppe Hein and his sister Lærke in Copenhagen places art at the centre. While celebrating the new generation of “creators” with an orgy of projects. Text Francesco Bonami. Photos Anders Sune Berg Artworks, courtesy of the artists.
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- 17 April 2008