The idea of Space Opera is to gather local and international artists working in disciplines such as painting, sculpture, poetry, performance and costume in a show with a starting point in opera.
Space Opera is a term for a subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes melodramatic adventure, interplanetary battles, chivalric romance, and risk-taking. In Crum Heaven, Space Opera may not be dealing so much with life on a spaceship, as with the relationship between art, decor, spatial design, and drama.
My previous work with exhibition architecture has touched on spatial issues and the experience of art within the exhibition space. My curatorial role on the occasion of Space Opera is to bring together a selection of artists whose work I see in some way or the other touches on the question of the theatrical space. I am interested in hybridizing the curatorial work with the creation of an exhibition architecture with a starting point in opera space (Using old opera decor to cover the walls for example). I want to think about questions of display and interaction from an opera-esque perspective and make room for the eccentric, the exaggerated, the dramatic and overplayed.
In times of individualism, I long for collectivistic work where different art forms get the space they need and at the same time work in a kind of symbiosis. The exhibition should be understood as a collective experiment rather than a finished product. This is a starting point of a space opera that I hope can be something like a growing monster and a seed of surprises.
/Pål Rodenius, Stockholm 2019
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