Gunnar B. Kvaran: on Yoko Ono and GROWING FREEDOM
Installation view, Yoko Ono: LIBERTÉ CONQUÉRANTE/GROWING FREEDOM, 2019, PHI Foundation. The art of John and Yoko. George Fok, introductory film to LIBERTÉ CONQUÉRANTE/GROWING FREEDOM, 2019. Image © PHI Foundation for Contemporary Art, photo: Richard-Max Tremblay.
Hosted by Cheryl Sim, the PHI FOUNDATION’S podcast series The Aura takes you inside and outside the work of art, in discussion with those who create, curate, write, think about, and enjoy contemporary art.
In each episode, PHI Foundation curator and managing director Cheryl Sim speaks one-on-one with internationally celebrated artists and personalities to explore the work of art as an expression of the questions and preoccupations that inhabit the mind and soul. Through the sharing of stories, thoughts and impressions, The Aura opens up a discussion on the practice of art and life to underscore how artists of our time speak to the questions, concerns and subjects that reflect and touch our everyday lives.
In this episode, Gunnar B. Kvaran, co-curator of the exhibition Yoko Ono: LIBERTÉ CONQUÉRANTE/GROWING FREEDOM: The Instructions of Yoko Ono and the art of John and Yoko, talks about Yoko Ono and her instruction works. This exhibition was presented in 2019 at the PHI Foundation and was due to open in May 2020 at Contemporary Calgary.
About GUNNAR B. KVARAN.
Gunnar B. Kvaran was born in Reykjavik, Iceland in 1955. He received a PhD in Art History from the University of Provence, Aix-en-Provence, France in 1986. Kvaran was director of the Reykjavik Art Museum between 1989 and 1997, and from 1997 to 2001 was Director of the Bergen Art Museum, Norway. He has been Director of the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Norway since 2001. Kvaran was co-curator for the 2nd Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art in 2007, curator for the Lyon Biennale in 2013, and co-curator of the Belgrade Biennale – October Salon (together with Danielle Kvaran). Recently, he curated the exhibitions: Anselm Kiefer: Livres et xylographies (together with Natalia Granero), Yoko Ono: THE SKY IS STILL BLUE, YOU KNOW... (Instituto Tomie Ohtake, Sao Paulo, Brazil), Los Angeles, a Fiction (together with Thierry Raspail and Nicolas Garait), Cindy Sherman: Untitled Horrors (together with Daniel Birnbaum); Matthew Barney: Bildungsroman, Andy Warhol by Andy Warhol, China Power Station (co-curated together with Hans Ulrich Obrist and Julia Peyton-Jones).
