Stockholm gallery opens 'Wag the Dog' exhibition

A multimedia exhibition by Armenian artist Azat Sargsyan on the perception of reality presented by the mass media, marks the start of the spring season at Stockholm art gallery wip:sthlm.

In Make History for a Pink Future, Azat Sargsyan, a visual artist based in both Yerevan and Stockholm, explores the ways reality can be tweaked and manipulated in order to suit purposes beyond the public awareness.

The multimedia montage exhibition takes as its starting point the American film Wag the Dog that premiered in 1997 just a month before the Monica Lewinsky scandal hit the mainstream news and presented an uncanny link between fiction and reality.

Wag The Dog tells the story of a spin-doctor and a Hollywood producer trying to save the president, who is alleged to have had a sexual affair. In order to steer the public's attention away from the factual events, a war is created in Albania.

The artist, who has spent the winter in residence at the gallery, uses news clips, hyperlinks, texts, photos and video footage to fuse the real with the imaginary and challenges the perception of reality as presented through the lens of mass media.

Azat Sargsyan is the co-founder and artistic director of the Gyumri Biennial that was initiated in 1998 and will open its seventh edition this autumn. He has exhibited at the 1997 Venice Biennial, the 2002 Sao Paulo Biennial, and in 1999 at the After The Wall exhibition at Stockholm’s Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Recent exhibitions include the Thessaloniki Biennale, the Moscow Biennale and the Cerveria Biennale in Portugal.

Wip:sthlm [work in progress] is a collaboration between 96 artists based in Årstaberg, Stockholm. Since its inception in 2006 wip:sthlm has developed four core activities: artists’ studios, gallery, artist-in-residence programme and a bookshop.

The Make History for a Pink Future exhibition runs until Saturday March 13th and is the first of a series of events taking place during the spring.