Klara Liden

Liden is as much a builder as an artist, a squatter, a scavenger, and a thief as much as she’s a builder. Hers is an art of pirating illicit, backroom-like habitats and unsustainable structures within highly developed and controlled urban environments. The materials used to produce this gallery-within-a-gallery on stilts were either obtained while walking the streets around 371 Grand St. or recovered from the basement of this building. The construction was done on site. For this project, Liden manipulates stacked and layered cardboard slats to produce subtle variations of opacity and transparency, flimsiness and stability. The structure can be entered from behind (climb pipes). The photographs on view within were taken during recent dérives through the lower east side. There are also two recent videos made by Liden. Paralyzed (2003) was filmed on a Stockholm subway at night, 550 Jamaica Avenue (2004) in a mysteriously vacated apartment in Bed-Stuy. The artist dances in one and sings in the other. Liden is a genius. Before this show she invented a free postal system in Stockholm, made books with “appropriated” outdoor advertising, and built an underground house on the banks of the River Spree. (Courtesy: Reena Spaulings Fine Art)