sanna@sannahelenaberger.com
Sanna Helena Berger works with site and situation-specific installations informed by critical agency and auto-biographic transparency. Her auto-didactic narrative applies a reflexive discipline, perspectivising her encounters with the art industry and its methods. These experienced standards are thematised in a meta-manner praxis which seeks to demystify her own production of art by applying philosophical empiricism, treating her experience as both content and reference. Installations consist of readymades and un-readymades, materialising the contrast between the two forms. Berger phenomenologically explores the formalism of a clear and present objet d’art and repositions the domestic object in its place. Through this selection Berger utilises strategies which prompt reflection on how we assign meaning and capital to the idea of originality and commodify it as exclusivity. Her site-specific practice thematises the exhibition itself as artwork, where formal minimalist modernity informs her ubiquitous aesthetics of aesthetics where objects act as collaborators. Whilst her performances deliver often dense monologues narrativising critical discourse, not only on the topic of art-at-large, but on the topic of her subjective and objective experience with art – as art.
‘Sanna Helena Berger creates situations that provoke and intensifies the alternation between scrutinising and coming under scrutiny that signifies our interaction with art. Berger effectively destabilises flows of real social interaction in a series of explorations into how behaviour is conditioned by our surroundings, and how in turn these mechanisms can be deployed for artistic purposes. Berger’s interventions enlarge and skew the familiar into subtly caricatured forms, inviting detachment. Yet, despite their stagedness, these performances and arrangements also bleed out into the space they occupy together with their audience, making participation compulsory.’
– Stian Gabrielsen, Editor, Kunstkritikk
Berger’s work is an aesthetic and intellectual structure driven by autodidacticism and material pragmatism. Often beginning as a text, her installations variate quotidian experience reformulating power relationships and ideas of value through situations and objects. While Sanna may not refer to herself as a director, I find it helpful to think about the diversity of her practice as a directorial strategy, particularly in her management and orchestration of meaning and form.
– Alexandra Symons Sutcliffe, Independent curator / writer, Mousse Magazine
2024
BOURSE, Centralbanken, Oslo, Norway *solo
Die installierte Reale with Cecilie Norgaard, Rinde am Rhein, Düsseldorf, Germany
Post-Dekadens, 3e våningen, Gothenborg, Sweden *solo
Nicht-nur-Spekulativ, Philipp Zollinger, Zürich, Switzerland *solo
New German Critique (or better ideas), Stadt&Land, Cittipunkt, Berlin
2023
Ohne, Ohne titel, Philipp Zollinger, Zürich
Mute Point, Shahin Zarinbal, Berlin
Unruly Analysis, Jennifee-See Alternate, Den Frie, Copenhagen
Post-mother-ism, amatter, Berlin
Postural Fatigue, Baerum Kunsthall, Oslo
Rational Display, Galerija Miroslav Kraljević, Zagreb *solo
Role (Play), Močvara Gallery, Zagreb *solo
CONCRETE ARGUMENTS, Shahin Zarinbal, Berlin *solo
Represäntation, Waf Galerie, Vienna
Minor Variations, Skånes Konstförening, Malmö
2022
Der Ganz Normale Luxus der Zunge, Kunsthalle Bremerhaven
XS, Spazio ORR, Brescia, Italy *solo
Ego & Orchestra, Hosêk Contemporary, Berlin *solo
A text about failure, amatter, Cittipunkt, Berlin
Der Ganz Normale Luxus, Neu Workshop, Hamburg
A text about failure, Höjden, Stockholm
2021
Persona Sonata, Lament.tv, Berlin *solo
Im dialog, w. Aline Sophie Rainer, Kunstverein Kärnten, Austria
2020
Parallels, Cell Project Space, London
2019
An ode to labour, 1.1 Basel, Switzerland
Oyster, PiK – Projektraum im Kunstwerk, Cologne
Nome d’us, Shore, Vienna
SALE, PS120, Berlin *solo
2018
A stock-take, Super, Berlin *solo
A smile-strike, Index, The Contemporary Art Foundation, Stockholm
Intermission, Delfi, Malmö
A sale, Brussels Art Weekend, Super, Brussels *solo
2017 (selection)
Vienna, Cordova, Vienna *solo
Vienna,Cordova, Barcelona *solo
Maybe there is a substitute for exhibiting, Minibar, Stockholm
Arbetstitel (offentligt verk), Delfi, Malmö *solo
2016 (selection)
Agency (properties of pseudo-public spaces as a prelude), Sorbus, Helsinki *solo
Agency, Kulturforum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, November
A sequence which corresponds, Union Gallery, London *solo
The edge must be scalloped, Diorama, Oslo *solo
Domestic Manifesto, Modern Museum, Stockholm
The body as function, Shanaynay, Paris
Selected Texts / Published works
Unruly Analysis, Jennifee-See Alternate catalogue, Copenhagen 2024
Success Media, Cecilie Norgaard exhibition text, Shahin Zarinbal, Berlin 2024
Carfume, Thorben Gröberl exhibtion text, Maniera Brussels, Berlin 2023
WHEELS, Cecilie Norgaard exhibtion text, PCP Galerie, Paris, 2023
Concrete Arguments, Verlag Ida Neustadt Co-published with Shahin Zarinbal, Catalogue, 2023
Feuilles Volantes by vorstellen.network at Sculpture Garden Biennale, Geneva, 2022
Der ganz normale luxus, Zirka, Hamburg / Yvonne Lambert, Paris, 2022
DEARS magazine, w Axelle Stiefel, Zürich, 2021
Artist Network Theory Supported by Swiss Art Prize, 2020
Eva Hesse Foundation publication, NY, 2018
Domestic Manifesto, Las Injurias, Caracas, Venezuela, 2016, Printed Matter, NY
Artist Residencies by invitation
Sorbus Galleria with solo exhibition, Helsinki, October, 2016
Union Gallery with solo exhibition, London, April/May, 2016
Jupiter Woods with solo exhibition, London, October, 2015
Rupert with solo exhibition, Vilnius, September, 2015