Kristian Vistrup Madsen
Kristian Vistrup Madsen
And more
Cue the Cue
This publication accompanying his most comprehensive exhibition to date exhibition is Jack O’Brien’s first monograph. Conceived by the artist himself, it complements the exhibition in both form and content, documenting his practice from 2021–2025 and transfers it into a different medium. Developed as an artist’s book it stands in direct relation to the magazine collages in the exhibition. The torn book cover, perforated paper pages, and a shoelace sealed under cellophane make the publication itself a sculptural gesture.
O’Brien negotiates themes such as staging, visibility, queer identity, and the circular dynamic between consumption, body, and performance. The title refers to the English “cue”—a theatrical cue—and at the same time to its repetition. This double meaning reflects O’Brien’s working method, in which material, form, and gesture continually oscillate between suggestion and withdrawal, presence and dissolution. O’Brien works with found and discarded objects, which he transforms through gestures of wrapping, binding, and perforation. His sculptures, installations, and collages use industrial materials such as cellophane, shrink wrap, and synthetic textiles.
The catalogue brings together the first substantial essays on O’Brien’s work. Alexander Wilmschen introduces the exhibition, in which chance becomes the driving force of reordering, and situates O’Brien’s work within the context of queer phenomenology. Kristian Vistrup Madsen examines the sadomasochistic dimensions of the work. Juliette Desorgues reads the sculptures as embodied punctuation. In conversation with Jeppe Ugelvig, O’Brien reflects on his artistic methodology and language.
The result is a monograph which also formally works with the moments of controlled instability that are so striking in the exhibition: floating, supported and warped.
Texts: Juliette Desorgues, Kristian Vistrup Madsen, Jack O’Brien & Jeppe Ugelvig (Interview) and Alexander Wilmschen
Side Magazine #02 – The Moped Rider
The second issue of the editorial discursive space for the Bergen Assembly triennial, conceived by Saâdane Afif, is dedicated to the manifold figure of the Moped Rider, which is approached differently by the seven contributors.
Side Magazine is conceived as a site of research for the fourth edition of Bergen Assembly convened by Saâdane Afif. Yasmine d'O., who has been invited as curator of the upcoming edition, will be the executive editor.
Side Magazine is dedicated to the seven characters in The Heptahedron, a play written by the French poet, essayist, and scholar Thomas Clerc in 2016. In order of apparition these characters are the Professor, the Moped Rider, the Bonimenteur, the Fortune Teller, an Acrobats, the Coalman, and the Tourist.
The second issue of Side Magazine is dedicated to the manifold figure of the Moped Rider, which is approached differently by the seven contributors. These include the film critic Lars Ole Kristiansen, who follows Nanni Moretti's vespa through Rome in the movie Caro Diario (1993), playing the role of a tourist in his own life. A reprinted chapter from Michele Bernstein's autofiction novel All the King's Horses (1960), tells the tale of late-night meanderings through Paris, and Kristian Vistrup Madsen addresses the changing intimacy between the musing figures in Caspar David Friedrich's series of paintings Two Men Contemplating the Moon (1819–c. 1830). Side Magazine's executive editor Yasmine d'O. is in conversation with curators Marcella Lista and Lou Ferrand about the place and movement of visitors in exhibition spaces.
Edited by Saâdane Afif and Yasmine d'O.
Contributions by Haci Akman, Michèle Bernstein, Lou Ferrand, Pierre-Henry Frangne, Patrick Jagoda, Yasmine d'O., Lars Ole Kristiansen, Marcella Lista, Kristian Vistrup Madsen.