The Dance We Dance When We Are Together
Joakim Ojanen
Ruttkowski68, founded in 2010 by Nils Müller, is a Cologne-Düsseldorf-New York- and Paris-based art gallery. The gallery concentrates on a broad range of practices within contemporary art. For its inaugural exhibition, Mixed Pickles, the gallery presents a wide-ranging group show spanning the fields of painting, sculpture, photography, and installation.
The Dance We Dance When We Are Together
The exhibition takes its title from a work by Joakim Ojanen, a Finnish artist who lives and works in Berlin. Ojanen's work often explores the relationship between the individual and the collective, and between the public and the private. In The Dance We Dance When We Are Together, Ojanen presents a series of large-scale photographs that depict people dancing in various public spaces.
The photographs are both beautiful and unsettling. They capture the joy and freedom of dance, but they also reveal the underlying tension and anxiety that often accompanies public gatherings. The dancers are often surrounded by strangers, and their movements are sometimes awkward or hesitant. This suggests that they are aware of the scrutiny of others, and that they are trying to perform a kind of dance that will be both acceptable and expressive.
The exhibition also includes works by other artists who explore the relationship between the individual and the collective. These include works by Danh Vo, Elmgreen & Dragset, and Thomas Hirschhorn. Taken together, these works create a complex and nuanced portrait of the ways in which we interact with each other in public spaces.
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