SHOW 13, Royal College of Art

SHOW 13, The piece I am showing:



The title 'Let me sleep! Let me boil, On the altars of Solomon; Let me soak the rusty soil' 2013 is from a poem by Arthur Rimbaud, the piece is a composition of performance, sculpture, clay, hides, wood, tools, light and human. Dimensions 4 x 5 m, Duration: 12 days.

 

The piece I am making for the SHOW 13, is an affair with both 'weightiness' and sculptural qualities in a ritual handling of the material, and the vitality of performance. Bringing out the better of these two processes, I am persuading them to tell stories and reveal what is buried in their matter, as well as in mine.

The installation consist of a compositions with two floor based platforms, one referencing a table/alter, the other one a bed/grave. The bed is for resting and table is for consuming

The table top it is made of leather. Clay elements will be sculpted on the skin of my body and then laid to rest on a bed or table of skin. Lamp shades will be hanging from the ceiling, transporting the activity into the homely sphere of a private space.

On the bed and table platforms an enduring process creating sculptures of clay will take place throughout the show. Using my whole body as a sight for producing sculptures, a confrontation between the clay and the artist’s body is taking place, blurring the boundary amongst the artists’ endpoint and the beginning of the sculpture.

The clay will change shape, colour, character, returning all back to the starting point, for then starting all over again: revisiting the act that happened the day before, rearranging the elements of the sculpture. Cutting them open, so they blossom in complete transformation, revealing an inside, traces of its origin is to be found.

Dough up from the ground, using clay in this work, has the sense of a folk melody or story, opposite of shining in novelty, it seem to have existed there all along. The energy of the soil, that with softness record and absorb every act it is put through, every little stroke and every brute force.

Artist statement

When I wake up in the morning

 

 

 

 

I am in the most poetic way sure that my work is about love and softness, during the day this changes, entering the night I am certain it is about sex and death.

 

Also being a philosopher with a background in the harsh Nordic melancholic and strict minimalistic, yet spiritual and mythical culture, in my works I always seems to be drawn to the core of life’s existence in itself.  

Imagining nothing is ever lost, nonetheless everything is always moving, most likely to return at some point if we allow it. All the stories of the world is surprisingly alike, also on top of ruins something flourishes and there will be fostered.

Moving through the effort of creating, for then leaving it and letting it go by giving, not claiming ownership or requesting anything in return, history and myth can be opened up, letting past experiences replay themselves, placing us in this present layer of time, linking everything that have ever been and everything that will ever come.

No one should dream of turning into dust, but after all we are all visitors to this time, to this place. We are just passing through. We can observe, to learn, to grow, to love... and then we will return.