Third Eye Butterfly

Storm de Hirsch
Nat Marcus
Luzie Meyer
Sofia Restorp
P Staff

1.12 2022 – 18.02 2023

Mint, ABF Stockholm, Sveavägen 41, Stockholm


Open by appointment only until March 7

The exhibition Third Eye Butterfly brings together an extraordinary range of artistic voices working at the intersection of language, music and film including Nat Marcus, Luzie Meyer, Sofia Restorp and P Staff, to expand on the work of American filmmaker Storm de Hirsch (1912–2000), who is considered one of the key figures of the 1960s New York avant-garde scene. De Hirsch, who’s artistic contribution remains largely overlooked within an institutional context, began her artistic career as a poet, and developed her film based practice through her understanding of language. Her work is strongly influenced by an interest in mysticism and occult practices, which is reflected in her exploration of analogue effects. Distinctive to her work is also the rhythmic interplay between image and sound. 

The film Third Eye Butterfly (1968) which lends the exhibition its title, is a result of multiple visual experiments inspired by the diverse range of colorful and abstract butterfly wing patterns. Kaleidoscopic shots and superimpositions come and go in the image, in tune with the soundtrack’s repetitive scheme, it appears as an attempt to translate the multi-color effect of butterfly wings into an expanded film experience. Intended to be projected on a double screen using two synchronized projectors, the film creates the illusion of seeing two butterfly wings animated by the flicker of the projected images. An eye, “the great Eye,” appears several times in the center of an endless spiral framed by the words “Third Eye Butterfly.” On this matter, the American theorist Casey Chanress explains that “the 70mm like effect of Third Eye Butterfly encourages the mind to work as a third eye by fusing the two side-by-side screens into a third meaning, just as Eisenstein caused the meaning of two juxtaposed shots to result in a third implied meaning.”

Installation view
Installation view
Installation view
Luzie Meyer, Period Piece, 2021
Luzie Meyer, Period Piece 2021
P Staff, Eat Clean Ass Only 2021
Nat Marcus, The Velvet Sound (I) + (II) 2022
Installation view
P Staff, Ancient & Celibate 2021
Installation view
Sofia Restorp. Installation view
Sofia Restorp. Installation view
Sofia Restorp, Crater 2022
Storm de Hirsch, Third Eye Butterfly (installation view), 1968
Storm de Hirsch, Third Eye Butterfly (still), 1968
Storm de Hirsch, Third Eye Butterfly (still), 1968
Storm de Hirsch, Third Eye Butterfly (still), 1968

By using rhythmized imagery that incorporates colors, stenciled shapes, and sound into an audiovisual continuum, de Hirsch evokes an experience which relies on the interrelationship of sensory modalities. Following this idea of a multilayered perception of the world and tracing the interconnectedness of language, music and film young international artists Nat Marcus (lives and works in Berlin), Luzie Meyer (1990, lives and works in Berlin), Sofia Restorp (1986, lives and works in Berlin) and P Staff (1987, lives and work in Los Angeles and London) were invited.

The idea of being transported into other states of reality emphasized by the pieces present in the show continues in the design of the conventional exhibition space of Mint and is characterized by the work of lighting designer Ines Bartl. Together with the curator, she came up with a concept for the corridors and places of transition for the light situations inspired by the color spectrum from Third Eye Butterfly.

In the exhibition, not only light is used to mark the places of transition, but also the medium of language emerges through various works to describe transformative processes: the audio work Period Piece (2021) by Luzie Meyer for example playfully explores the manifold meaning of the word period that is used to describe how bodies, language and time are regulated. Similar to Meyer’s work, Nat Marcus who produced two new fabric pieces The Velvet Sound (I) and The Velvet Sound (II) (2022) which on their surface are layering graphics, paint and text as well as P. Staff’s poems displayed on hologram fans, engage the idea of multiple, fluid meanings of words to talk about bodies that encounter themselves in transitory states. Sofia Restorp’s newly created drawings, on the other hand, return to a purely visual world, but are thoroughly poetic due to the ambiguous surrealistic interiors that are depicted. Rather than dwelling on the surface her pieces can be characterized by the idea of a reflective looking inward.

Third Eye Butterfly can be seen as an attempt to reflect on Storm de Hirsch’s psychedelic view of the world and how surpassing common notions of what reality is, is more relevant than ever to artists working in the here and now.

Curator: Cathrin Mayer

Cathrin Mayer (b. 1988 Vienna) is currently the associate curator at HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark (Graz, AT). Until 2020, she was curator at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin. In addition to her curatorial work, she teaches regularly and is holding a guest professorship for curatorial studies at The University of Art and Design Linz (AT).

Anything happens here

Beatrice Gibson
Britt-Ingrid Persson (BIP)

9.9 – 8.10 2022

Mint, ABF Stockholm, Sveavägen 41, Stockholm


In the room, two eggs are resting in a nest. In the same place, a drama unfolds. It is told through a dreamlike montage with a poodle, a beauty queen and two sisters who are not sisters in the roles. Here in this place, which is the exhibition, experiences and things are duplicated. Pregnant events without redemption. Anything could happen here. There is both anticipation and anxiety in the air.

The exhibition Anything happens here includes the acclaimed film Deux sœurs qui ne sont pas sœurs (Two Sisters Who Are Not Sisters), 2019, by British artist Beatrice Gibson (b. 1978 London) and sculptures by Britt-Ingrid Persson BIP (b. 1938 Stensele).

Britt-Ingrid Persson (BIP), Äggets och stråets minne (The Memory of the Egg and the Straw)
Britt-Ingrid Persson (BIP), Äggets och stråets minne (The Memory of the Egg and the Straw), 1991. Photo by Johan Österholm.
Britt-Ingrid Persson (BIP) Äggets och stråets minne (The Memory of the Egg and the Straw)
Britt-Ingrid Persson (BIP), Äggets och stråets minne (The Memory of the Egg and the Straw), 1991. Photo by Johan Österholm.
Britt-Ingrid Persson (BIP) Den begränsade ljusskretsen (The Limited Circle of Light),
Britt-Ingrid Persson (BIP), Den begränsade ljusskretsen (The Limited Circle of Light), 1991. Photo by Johan Österholm.
Beatrice Gibson, Deux sœurs qui ne sont pas sœurs, 2019. Installation image. Photo by Johan Österholm.
Anything Happens Here, installation shot. Photo by Johan Österholm.

Movement Patterns

Chiara Bugatti

9.6 – 18.6 2022

Mint, ABF Stockholm, Sveavägen 41, Stockholm


Curator: Ingrid Svahn (International master’s program in Curating Art, Stockholm University)

The exhibition Movement Patterns explores the meeting between the body and the monument, the fragile and the eternal, movement and stillness, history and memory. 

Movement patterns can be something deeply personal, unique to each person. They can be seen from a distance – human activity as dots on a satellite image from above. They can be discerned throughout history – how the pendulum swings back and forth. They are found in materials – through sedimentation processes, marble can tell us what has slowly been created over time.

Photo by Johan Österholm
Photo by Johan Österholm
Photo by Johan Österholm
Photo by Johan Österholm
Photo by Johan Österholm
Photo by Johan Österholm
Photo by Johan Österholm
Photo by Johan Österholm

In her artistic practice, Chiara Bugatti examines materials that seems to have lost their main function. Through three works of sculpture, installation and video, she explores the memory of materials, their historical associations and narrative possibilities, such as allowing marble to break down to then re-emerge in perishable room installations, or possibly eternal forms. Sudden external influence, or slow decomposition processes, make visible the fragile and temporary in the constant and solid, when human movement is put in relation to a monumental stillness. One of the works in the exhibition is made in collaboration with artist Sebastian Moske and choreographer Alessandro Giaquinto.

Chiara Bugatti (Lecco, Italy) is a visual artist based in Stockholm. Bugatti holds a BFA from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia (IT, 2014), an MFA from Umeå Academy of Fine Arts (SE, 2016) and a Postmaster from the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm (SE, 2021). She was recently a grant holder at IASPIS (SE) and fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart (DE). She is part of the current exhibition Släpljus at the Carl Eldh studio museum, as well as the 15th Trienniale Kleinplastik Fellbach in Germany and her work has been exhibited in institutions across Europe.

Sebastian Moske is an artist based in Berlin. After studying acting and working in the theatre, he studied art under Rosa Barba at HfK in Bremen and was part of IASPIS international residency program in Malmö (2021). Alessandro Giaquinto is a dancer and choreographer based in Stuttgart. In 2016 he joined the Stuttgart Ballet after completing his training at the John Cranko Schule.

Ingrid Svahn is a freelance curator and student in the international master’s program in Curating Art at Stockholm University. This exhibition is made as part of her graduation project and made possible with the support of Mint and Stockholm University. 

Lighting design by Seth Margolies, graphic design by Julian Redaelli.

Thank you to Studio Pica for the loan of installation material.

Image: Picture of Study for a Monument I, Jellified Carrara Marble, 2021. Photo: Chiara Bugatti.

Rymdrummet

Agnieszka Polska
Eddie Figge

21.4 – 18.6 2022

Mint, ABF Stockholm, Sveavägen 41, Stockholm


In Rymdrummet, two artists meet who get to grips with physics and the poetry of gravity. Through painting and animation, respectively, an aesthetic connected to the weightless state, movement and a transformative variability is examined.

Eddie Figge, Intelligent Life in the Universe, 1983. Photo by Johan Österholm.
Rymdrummet, installation shot. Photo by Johan Österholm.
Eddie Figge, Space Station, 2000. Photo by Johan Österholm.
Eddie Figge, Space Station, 2000. Photo by Johan Österholm.
Eddie Figge, Rymden, 1980 & Agnieszka Polska, The Happiest Thought, 2019. Photo by Johan Österholm.
Eddie Figge, Rymdsyner, 1972 & Agnieszka Polska, The Happiest Thought, 2019. Photo by Johan Österholm.
Eddie Figge, Farväl Voyager II, 1989. Photo by Johan Österholm.
Eddie Figge, Rymdsyner, 1972. Photo by Johan Österholm.

Eddie Figge (1904–2003 Stockholm) was an artist and poet, an innovator in modern painting in Sweden. After working at the theater and ballet, she began her artistic career later in life. During the 1950s, she found her language through informal painting with a world of motifs that revolved around light, darkness and space. Her style was characterized by a strong sense of color, movement and rhythm. She found inspiration in space travel, quantum physics and the poetic dimensions of science. Eddie Figge had her breakthrough at Galerie Blanche in 1961, and during the 80s and 90s she had several large museum exhibitions in Sweden and abroad. In 1989, Figge participated in the Sao Paulo Biennale with a selection of her space paintings. The last major solo exhibition with Eddie Figge was shown at Liljevalch’s Art Gallery in Stockholm in 2003, curated by Olle Granath. Figge is represented at the Museum of Modern Art, the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris and the Museum of Sketches in Lund.

Agnieszka Polska (b. 1985 in Lublin, Poland) creates videos, animations and photographs, often using archival or stock material, combining it with animation. There is a certain state of emergency present in her works. It derives from the political and social environment of our time. But rather than moralistically referencing specific matters like ecological issues, or the rise of nationalistic sentiments, the artist focuses on creating an immersive experience for the audience. As a distant but diligent observer, the viewer becomes a prisoner of the video footage and events unfolding before his eyes. It’s the immersion that charges Polska’s videos with political potential. She has presented her works at international venues, among them, the New Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Pompidou and Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Tate Modern in London, Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC, and Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin. Polska also participated in the 57th Venice Biennale, 11th Gwangju Biennale, 19th Biennale of Sydney, and 13th Istanbul Biennial. 

The exhibition is supported by The Swedish Arts Council, the City of Stockholm and the Region of Stockholm