David Lamelas is considered a pioneer in conceptual art and the exhibition at Kunstnernes Hus takes a closer look at some of the main lines of his work; the investigation of time, space and language. At a time when a conceptual approach is an obvious artistic strategy, it is natural to take a closer look at an artistry such as Lamela's. Conceptual art in the Nordics has historically had its field of action in smaller contexts such as artist-run projects, magazines and small publishers, and has only exceptionally been distributed through art's wider channels. In the foreword to the Swedish journal OEI's issue KONC KONS, this has been described as a kind of memory loss, a condition that arose early and which has since lived on in art historical overviews and exhibitions in our art environment.

Such a loss of memory can be said to have occurred in relation to an artistry such as Lamela's, and possibly it can explain why his work is primarily known in an international context. Lamelas was born and raised in Argentina and had his breakthrough at the Venice Biennale in 1968 with his Office of Information About the Vietnam War at Three Levels: The Visual Image, text and Audio, a work which is being recreated this year at MoMA New York to be included in their collection. One of those who discovered Lamelas in Venice was the artist Marcel Broodthaers who introduced him to the gallery Wide White Space in Antwerp. Here he became part of a group of renowned conceptual artists who were active in Europe at this time; including Lawrence Weiner, Panamarenko and Jan Dibbets. This affinity resulted in a nomadic artistic existence between Buenos Aires, Los Angeles, London and Paris.

The exhibition is curated by artistic director Mats Stjernstedt in collaboration with curator Vincenzo de Bellis, Milan.

David Lamelas is best known for his structuralist films and media installations that were produced after his arrival in Europe in the 60s and 70s. With these iconic projects, the artist questions the temporality of art and how it functions as a means of communication in relation to the spectator's awareness of his role as observer and participant. Kunstnernes Hus has chosen to focus on works that emphasize Lamelas' investigations of the span between the documentary and the fictional, his experimental interdisciplinary activities in the area between image and text, and his ground-breaking cinematic investigations of time and space. Furthermore, two sculptural installations are shown that polarize between architectural interventions and immaterial articulation.