Johan Thurfjell’s solo show “An Attempt to Understand” opens at sixteen:one gallery on Saturday, September 20th with a reception from 7 – 10pm. The exhibition continues through October 20th.
In his first solo exhibition in the United States, Thurfjell presents work which grapples with the inability of people to fully comprehend the world in which they exist. His on-going project, An Attempt to Understand (2001 – present), deals with the role played by personal and subjective perception in history-description. In the project, the artist works with two parallel chronologies where personal memories from his own life are superimposed onto a preexisting path within world history, the Palestine-Israel conflict. The project springs out of the simple will to try to understand and find a context in these separate issues, in addition to inserting his own persona in a politico-historical process as a way of highlighting the importance of the personal references in history writing.

In another work in the exhibition, Embracing Space, a film from 2002, Thurfjell inverts the terrestrial globe, offering a vision of the core of the earth. In the catalog for the recent exhibition Nano in which he participated, curator Laurence Dreyfus describes Thurfjell as “a young artist who raises spiritual and existential questions and who questions collective and individual memory as well as the influence of popular culture such as video games and films.” This attitude is demonstrated in a number of other works that will also be on view in his show.

Thurfjell received his Master’s of Fine Art, in 1999 from Konstfack; University College of Arts Crafts and Design, Stockholm. He has shown recently in Internatinales Kurzfilm-Festival, Hamburg and Directors Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival. Other venues for his work have included Modern Museum, Stockholm, Sweden; The Modern Museum, Shanghai, China and the University Art Museum, Chiang Mai, Thailand.

This exhibition is curated by icespace, a non-profit curatorial project that presents work by international emerging artists in exhibition spaces throughout Los Angeles. sixteen:one is an art space featuring an ongoing series of contemporary art exhibitions organized by artists and independent curators. sixteen:one is located at 2116-B Pico Blvd in Santa Monica, CA. Gallery hours are Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, 11 – 5 p.m. For information, call 310.450.4394 or visit www.16to1.com or www.icespace.org.