Dag Alveng - Racing

Together with two comrades, one a mechanic, the other
engineer, he competes in the Corsa Italiana series. This series requires
that it is driven by Italian cars, at least 15 years old. Alveng and his
team drives a station wagon, Lancia Thema SW. The car is totally stripped
and rebuilt to become a very fast race car. There are two things in particular
which is the driving force behind this project, namely the interest in
Italian design, and a nostalgic sense of what is modern but of
a good vintage. This is also an environment where men can cultivate camaraderie
pleasures, and where they are surrounded by all the great effects that belong
contributing to branding and driving. This is traditionally boy stuff
and tools from traditional male occupations. The exhibition will show the car
they drive, on board video recordings from races, workshop props and the few,
visible reminders that there is a feminine grace around this environment
and an erotic thrill.

During the work in the workshop, during the preparations and implementation
of races, lots of photographs are taken, snap shots, like either Alveng himself
or any of the others take. These are shown in the exhibition as slide shows
TV screens. But in addition to these quickly taken situational pictures is one
important part of the exhibition large and medium-sized photographs Alveng has taken
on the closed practice tracks in Germany and Italy. These pictures are
classic Alvengverk, they show the silent presence of the landscape in a
slow and natural process. The exhibition is organized as an installation,
or a style site, as it is called in the art of the 1990s and 2000s.
The exhibition will show the tension between the motorized and noisy culture
efficiency and the landscape's sustained existence as a silent arena for
the changing expression of culture.

There is also a clear tension between the masculine and the feminine
world, here shown through a nostalgic view of the feminine as a
beautiful phenomenon to admire and reach for. In a time where it long
has been warned that art is over and that avant-garde art has become one
activity based on a conscious strategy and skills acquired by
art academies and art schools, this project will show how
Artists can still work visually and substantively challenging
with exchange and negotiation between art and life, desire and reward,
expression and experience. By seeing Dag Alveng's business as one
neo-avant-garde artistry, where a conceptual and performative
approach to art has been present since the beginning of
1970s, it becomes possible to draw on the quite different elements
the exhibition RACING together.

The exhibition is accompanied by the book DAG ALVENG - RACING (The publisher
PRESS), where the connection between photography, motorsport and the gender difference,
in Åsmund Thorkildsen's essay Ungkarsspill, interpreted with a
analysis of Marcel Duchamp's famous works as a focal point.
The exhibition is an in-house production.

Dag Alveng is internationally known as a photographer, through projects such as Sommerlys, Asylum, and series of double and quadruple exposures of street life and urban structure in New York. But Alveng's starting point is the neo avant-garde, and early in his career he worked with conceptual issues and he explored performative strategies in the internationally oriented environment in Norway in the 1980s.

The Motor Foto exhibition will fill both halls for changing exhibitions in the Lyche Pavilion, where his photographic art will be presented on a Style Site together with style elements from his passion as a track racer with standard Italian cars. Those who drive in this race series are particularly interested in Italian cars of a somewhat older brand; the cars must be at least 15 years old to join the race. The practice as a race car driver is surrounded by a wealth of hyper cool style elements in retro style. Cars, the workshop, driving suits, start flags, calendar girls from the equipment suppliers, tools, engines and logos. Much of this will be part of the installation on this site specific re-creation of the environment in the workshop and on tracks during training and running. At the exhibition, the car itself will be presented as an interactive sculpture where the audience can sit down and watch on board video footage from races. As a framework for style elements and car racing props, a number of beautiful photographs Alveng has taken on practice tracks in Germany, both Nordschleife and Südschleife, and on the Monza track in Italy.

The exhibition is accompanied by an essay, written by the exhibition's curator, Åsmund Thorkildsen. Essay and exhibition are closely linked. Dag Alveng is written with the exhibition and interpretation into the international avant-garde art. It is an alternative way of reading this important part of modernism. Alveng's project is seen as a strong paraphrase of Dadaism and the art of the neo-avant-garde. With an example in Noam Chomsky's generative grammar, an alternative way of looking at, and an alternative interpretive model for, the Dadaist-inspired, performative and participatory art is launched. In the larger context Alveng is written into with this project, it is all seen as a metaphorical Ungkarsspill, where a persistent civilization-critical problem complex and eros and desire as an important driving force in society and art, are treated. At a time when it has long been announced that art is over and that avant-garde art has become an activity based on a conscious strategy and skills acquired at art academies and art schools, this project will show how artists can continue to work visually and substantively challenging with exchange and negotiations between art and life, desire and reward, expression and experience.