Saint Louis - The Saint Louis Art Museum announces the opening of Magical World, the eighth installation in the Museum's New Media Series.  In this 2005 work, Johanna Billing (Swedish, born 1973) uses performance and video to portray group interactions, merging the real and the staged.  Filmed in a free after-school cultural center in Dubrava, a suburb of Zagreb, Croatia, Magical World provides a glimpse of a country in transformation.  Through Billing’s perspective, the country is still recovering from the break-up of the former Yugoslavia, but it is projected to join the European Union in due time. Imagery from an urban environment in development is interspersed with footage of a group of children carefully rehearsing the Rotary Connection song “Magical World”.

A resident of Sweden, Billing received an M.F.A. degree from Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm in 1999.  Billing has had solo exhibitions at P.S. I, New York; Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago; Milch at Gainsborough Studios, London; Oslo Kunsthall; and Royal Academy of Art, Stockholm.  She has participated in group exhibitions in venues including Moderna Museet, Stockholm; De Appel, Amsterdam; 9^th International Istanbul Biennal; Transit, Bratislava; Trafo Gallery, Budapest; the Yugoslav Biennial of Young Artists, Vrsac/Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro; Prague Biennale, 2003; and Venice Biennale, Italian Pavilion, 2003. 

Curated by Robin Clark, associate curator of contemporary art, Magical World will be on view in Gallery 301 through March 4, 2007.

The Saint Louis Art Museum is one of the nation's leading comprehensive art museums with collections that include works of art of exceptional quality from virtually every culture and time period.  Areas of notable depth include Oceanic art, pre-Columbian art, ancient Chinese bronzes and European and American art of the late 19th and 20th centuries, with particular strengths in 20^th- century German art.  The Museum offers a full range of exhibitions and educational programming generated independently and in collaboration with local, national, and international partners. 

Admission to the Saint Louis Art Museum is free to all every day; exhibition admission is free on Fridays.  For more information about the Saint Louis Art Museum visit : www.slam.org