Like origami gone wrong

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Simon Dybbroe Møller's first monograph folds Modernist art history into something new. His interest stems in part from personal nostalgia and in part from intellectual fascination; he once told an interviewer, "You and I grew up in a society where a certain kind of provincial Modernism has had a major influence on how schools are constructed and everything. Furthermore, Modernism represents--and I guess it is almost a cliché to say--the last period of utopia, and a belief in actually producing truths." One installation, a darkened room with scattered light sources and projection screens, recalls both a party and the fusty setting of an academic conference; in another, a portrait of Le Corbusier emerges from a stain in the ceiling. Frieze magazine has called Møller's celebration of both the past and the uninterrupted march of artistic progress "a welcome alternative to thinking about art history as a daunting public library with strict rules for readers."