Simen Johan at MAD Museum in New York

Dead or Alive will showcase the work of over 30 international artists who transform organic materials and objects that were once produced by or part of living organisms to create intricately crafted and designed installations and sculptures. The materials transformed by the artists are entirely natural, and they create artworks that address the transience of life, and all that is elegant and alarming about the natural world.

Dead or Alive evokes our deepest emotions about mortality, and at the same time celebrates the new life given to lifeless materials. The exhibit features new site-specific installations and recent work by contemporary artists from around the world, including a work by Simen Johan. According to the museums director Holly Hotchner, the exhibition “highlights the elaborate creative processes that reanimate these once-living objects as part of large-scale installations, photographs, videos, and sculptures”.

Born in Norway and raised in Sweden, Johan earned his B.F.A at the School of Visual Arts, in New York, where he currently resides. Simen Johan’s work has been widely exhibited internationally, and is in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Cleveland Art Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and other major institutions.

For more information about this exhibition, please visit madmuseum.org.

Source: Royal Norwegian Embassy