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Michigan Museum of Art Presents UMMA Projects: Simon Dybbroe Moller

The Michigan Museum of Art is to present UMMA Projects: Simon Dybbroe Møller, on view November 6, 2010 to February 13, 2011.

Things are not always as they seem in the work of Simon Dybbroe Møller. Indeed, the Danish artist’s works can at times appear to have been teleported from a slightly askew, alternate version of the past. Seemingly familiar forms often appear in unexpected configurations and objects we think we recognize turn out to be something else entirely. An abstract wall painting emerges from beneath a layer of peeling plaster. A group of minimalist sculptures turn out to be the pieces of an enlarged Soma cube. This uncertainty is central to the experience of Dybbroe Møller’s work, where an initial misrecognition leads to a moment of aesthetic discovery.

Dybbroe Møller’s penchant for puzzles and paradoxes reflects his interest in modernism’s theoretical aspirations as well as its practical failings. Similarly, his frequent adoption of “outmoded” media both provides him with a diverse artistic palette and a means of questioning the past century’s faith in progress through technology and the avant-garde promise of continual artistic development.

For Dybbroe Møller’s first solo exhibition in a North American museum, UMMA will present a new body of work that continues his ongoing engagement with and critique of the modernist paradigm of transparency.

This project is made possible in part by the University of Michigan Office of the Provost, The Danish Arts Council Committee for International Visual Art, The American-Scandinavian Foundation, and UMMA’s New Visions Venture Fund, including the Susan and Richard Gutow Fund.

Image: Simon Dybbroe Møller Installation view, Letter From the New World to the Old World, Kunstlerhaus Bremen 2006 Courtesy of the artist; Harris Lieberman, New York; and Galerie Kamm, Berlin

www.umma.umich.edu

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