Nine Beier, Scheme, 2014, Online organic vegetable box scheme, delivered to the gallery at timed intervals, Dimensions variable. Courtesy Croy Nielsen
By Lilly Daniell
The office carpet laid down for Nina Beier’s second show at Berlin’s Croy Nielsen becomes a monochrome backdrop for the scheduled arrival of seasonal vegetable boxes, which will pile-up as the exhibition continues into late February; Scheme (2014) is a work that has grown and is growing still. Perhaps the delivery is a lifestyle indictment: a bourgeois fancy for healthy, fresh food – so convenient it’s easy to forget the effort involved. The repetitive, cumulative process highlights the labour-intensive systems at work. Is Scheme a statement or a sculpture? Ordering vegetables to rest on a gallery floor naturally turns the natural, sculptural and so comments on systems of behaviour both within and beyond the gallery setting.
The space is also inhabited by four office plants, which make up two works made in collaboration with Simon Dybbroe Møller. Bought from an auction in Copenhagen, Growth Lot No. 3014942 and Growth Lot No. 3017331 (both 2013) originally decorated the headquarters of the bankrupt Amager Bank. Now they stand withered in metal cylinders under growth lights – normally used to sustain marijuana – preserving their green and outliving the bank. Economic downturn is compared fluidly with physical growth and conservation. The notion of the journey resurfaces as nature is moved from A to B for sculptural means. These sterile office accessories are as familiar and mundane as the onions and the broccoli; the works’ success is in the action of the delivery, and the easy slips between signifiers.
Nina Beier and Simon Dybbroe Møller, Growth Lot No. 3017331, 2013, Philodendron scandens and Dracaena Surculosa from the headquarters of the bankrupt Amager Bank in Copenhagen, Metal cylinder planters, growth light, Dimensions variable. Courtesy Croy Nielsen
Beier’s wall pieces meditate on the exoticism of the visual, framing peculiar semantics that rely on inherited logic. Marbled leggings are flattened alongside foxtail key rings and open scissors. Loaded gestures become a decorative pattern, a two-dimensional quip at absurdity. The vegetables that pattern the Hermes tie in Office Nature Nobody Pattern (2014) neatly reference the groceries on the ground, giving the show a totality and circularity, which will be repeated weekly each time the vegetables arrive.
The title of the exhibition was formulated with the help of an online keyword generator normally used to tag stock photographs; the system is a digital necessity for multiple hits, but meaning could get lost in translation with verbal communication: “Office. Nature. Nobody. Pattern.” It might be due to online ubiquity and the clipped immediacy of todays twitter speak, but these four words seem to summarise Beier’s exhibition with subliminal efficiency.
Each new work from this Berlin-based artist highlights frameworks that structure and support society. Through the questions that arise about everyday interactions with our environment, and the thoughtful shift between object and action, Beier visually communicates her language of keywords.
Nina Beier, Office Nature Nobody Pattern at Croy Nielsen, until February 22, 2014
Nina Beier has upcoming solo shows at the Kunsthaus Glarus, Glarus, the David Roberts Arts Foundation, London and Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp; and will be in the group exhibition “#nostalgia” at CCA, Glasgow curated by Laura McLean-Ferris as part of Glasgow International.
Nine Beier, Office Nature Nobody Pattern, 2013, Hermes ties, clock, foam, UV security glass, bolts, 130 x 100 x 6 cm. Courtesy Croy Nielsen