Jimmie Durham »Stones in Various Poses«

Jimmie Durham's starting point is often an object that he cunningly transforms into something else. He thereby creates new meanings with just a few words or gestures, without letting the object really cut its umbillical cord to its older self. Occasionally his works take on a deadpan stance, but never lose their seriousness.

A Stone from Metternich's House in Bohemia, 1998, consists of a display case with the glass top smashed by stone. Metternich-who once worked to reverse the revolutionary tendencies in Europe, after the Napoleonic Wars, and laid the founding stone to a comprehensive European power balance policy-has had his window broken by a stone, as if the house had turned on its old inhabitant, or as if the spectre of revolution still walks across Europe. Cover, from 1998, is a polished granite slate lying on the floor. With its red rope handles attached to each end it mimics the protective lid of an elegant gift box-but also the cover of a tomb. In a separate room of the gallery, an as yet untitled installation consisting of an orange coloured rowing boat, that reminds the viewers of one of the most common modes of transportation in the Stockholm archipelago. The boat seems here to have been left stranded in the midst of a group of blue "islets." Yet another piece in the show is Durham's photographic diptych, Time Heals All Wounds, from 1998.

This is the second time Jimmie Durham shows at Galerie Nordenhake. The artist is born in 1940. Although constantly on travel, he may very well be found in Berlin-at least for the time being.