Incipit. I gratefully thank my friend Peter Briggs, artist, sculptor, for his rereading of my English version. And I thank Thora Dolven Balke and Élodie Stroecken for their collaboration.
At Tours, in France, the very brand new Centre of Art CCCOD (Centre de Création Contemporaine/Olivié Debré) opened in March. For its opening, it pays tribute to the great French painter Olivier Debré. Debré travelled a lot. Yet, one country he was very fond was Norway. In order to acknowledge this, the director of the CCCOD, Alain Julien-Laferrière, had the idea to show some of the paintings that Debré did in Norway, and especially in Lærdal, in South of the country. As a kind of homage to this ‘Debrayan’ presence, the Director of the CCCOD and one of his exhibition managers, Élodie Stroecken, went to Norway, in order to discover what was happening in the contemporary art scene there. Over there, they met some artists, and, especially, the one who later became one of the two curators of the exhibition in Tours, Thora Dolven Balke. The 9th of March marked the press opening of the CCCOD, and I had an interview with Thora Dolven Balke. This is the interview which we can listen to and read below. But first, allow me to add that I have not written about all the artists in the exhibition. This doesn’t mean that they would be negligible, it is rather, that I was led through the show by Thora Dolven Balke, and that things happened that way. Hence, this article is the fruit of a walk, with its stops, its unexpected parts, and its incompleteness. I assume all of it.
(Hyperlinks are in underlined bold black).
I must say, at her request, that the written interview has been edited by Thora Dolven Balke. Therefore, the audio file is a bit different from the transcript below.
Mychkine : Alright
Thora Dolven Balke : Ask me any question
M : So…
B : Thora Dolven Balke is my name
M : OK
B : And I met Elodie Stroecken, who is the curator at the CCCOD, in Oslo, and Alain.
M : Ok
B : the director of the CCCOD.
M : Can I ask how did you meet ?
B : We met because Alain and Elodie were in Oslo, doing research for this exhibition, at the very beginning stages
M : OK, alright
B : Because, they wanted to explore this link between Olivier Debré and his work made in Norway, by looking at what is happening in Norway today.
M : OK
B : So, they came there and I met them, and, myself, as many other Norwegian artists, have artist-run smaces for many years, in Oslo
M : OK
B : Like many others in my generation I have moved between being curator, artist and producer in Norway. So I think that they thought it would be interesting for me to come in and select with them, since my view is from the inside, and theirs from the outside, so to speak.
M : Yeah, sure, nice position indeed.
B : So that’s how ‘Innland’ came about.
M : OK
B : So it’s very much our joint selection. Because if I or they were to select alone it would be quite different. If I was to look at Norway, and say, ‘Oh I will make an exhibition with only Norwegian artists’ – first of all I don’t think I would, in this way at this point in time.
M : Yeah ?
B : Because, I would question why select artists from the point of view of geography or nationality? But, since I was asked to think about this, it became an interesting challenge, and I think that it became very relevant to not think about Norway as a geographical location and as a country, but to think about what it represents as a place for living. How do the unique conditions in Norway act as a place to produce art, to think, to be challenged, for philosophy, for production? And importantly the artists in the exhibition are not just Norwegian artists, they are also artists who have come to Norway for various reasons to study there, live there, and/or have a life there. Or Norwegian artists who are from Norway, but who live abroad and have an international career. So it’s a very international exhibition, but everyone has had Norway as a place where they have studied, spent time and perhaps collaborated.
M : They are from Norway, but don’t live necessarily in Norway
M : They are from Norway, but don’t live necessarily in Norway
B : No, they’re not all from Norway but they have all been working, studying, being part of Norwegian society as artists.
M : OK
B : So, shall we just walk through the exhibition ?
M : We walk through, and you say a few words about the works, that we’ll see, okay ?
B : Yeah. So what we see here Tiril Hasselknippe‘s sculptures, and Ann Cathrin November Høibo’s installation. And this is actually my work here. And this is actually my work here, these two prints on silicone. Two large prints hanging on a support structure of fluorescent light tubes. So Tiril Hasselknippe’s sculptures in here already echo outside of the building itself.1
Tiril Hasselknippe, ‘balcony’, 2016, cast concrete, welded steel, courtesy of the artistM : Yeah
B : I think it’s a very nice thing that’s been happening in this exhibition that people very naturally gravitate towards them, and also really lean on them and touch them without inhibition. I think it’s very interesting actually because they become a meeting point. My own work here is in three parts. It’s called ‘In good hands’, and I thought about it very directly related to the title and to this idea of ‘Innland’. Of how the social democracies function or fail as support structures; how government supports you and how people support each other. It’s a print on silicone as I said, and I like this material because it’s very heavy, it’s like a heavy body. And it’s hanging on something that’s quite fragile. In the image you see people working together to plant flowers on a hill, so they’re waiting to pass flowers between each other to plant them, filling an area with plants. But the prints are turned on their side so the people are almost pouring down the hill… Losing their gravity, their grip in a way. And the other parts of the work are –
M : So, you are saying that there are some kind of connections with politics, what is the connection ?
B : To me, it is more raising a question in an open way, hopefully triggering something in the other. The title of the work is ‘In good hands’, and I mean to alert to, point to the question of ‘whose hands are you in’? Each others as part of a society, or your family’s, your friends, your neighbors. Or in the case of Norway; in the hands of the state, in our social democratic model. The state is our main support structure you could say. So, the work is in three parts as I said.
M : So…
B : Yeah, we can go. So I am trying to show the fragility of these bodies and their structures of support.
Thora Dolven Balke, ‘In Good Hands’, part 1, 2017, Prints on silicone, neon lights, courtesy of the artist
B :Here ! [Enthousiastically, Dolven Balke points toward the second part of her work]
M : This is yours ?
B : Yes ! They are all bodies in different dimensions, parts of bodies. The work has a lot to do with gravity and weight. These are casts in iron, and they are almost like a puzzle, in many parts. This could be like a pelvis, here a knuckle, a leg, a foot. The silicone shapes you see here are cut from the same material as the prints, they’re both flat and three-dimensional at the same time, meaning that they seem very flat to the eye. They are also a bit like underwear to me, like three over-sized pieces of underwear that are out in the open, exposed. A bit embarrassing somehow and vulnerable.
Thora Dolven Balke, ‘In Good Hands’, Part 3, (detail), iron cast, courtesy of the artist
Thora Dolven Balke, ‘In Good Hands’, part 2, 2017, silicone cut-outs, clips, photograph, courtesy of the artist
Then I have worked with Polaroid for many years. I come from a photography background, and in some ways, I always think about the photographic qualities of materials, but this Polaroid here is maybe just a clue to a… kind of mythology or the whole, the brains of it, the reason, and… that’ s how I think of them anyway.
The Polaroid seen closer
M : OK. So, do you continue to speak about the works ?
B : Sure. The artist actually is here, maybe… Solveig ! Can you talk a bit about your work ?
Solveigh Lønseth : Yes.
M : So, if you can speak about your work ?
SL : Absolutely. When I was invited to be a part of the show
M : Yes
SL : I got the floor plan, of the curators, Thora and Valérie, and we also talked about the space, the building, and I’m very interested in architecture. And most of my works are based or come out of architecture situations. And also I work a lot with daylight. So I ask if I can work with these windows, because there are actually windows, which are now covered. Then, the curators also told me that this would be the situation, that it would be a black box, or, ja, « espace noir ». And then I asked if I could come to Tours before they close the windows, to work with the sunlight, and hold that light, into the space. So I were here in November, and then I’m assured where the sunlight was hitting the floor, and also I’m assured of angles, and the length of the area.
M : Hmm hmm…
SL : And then, very inspired by Olivier Debré, his way of painting, and painting the lights. And also he’s interesting, like, for some of them are build for the architecture. And then, he brought them outside, and brought the light inside again. So I wanted to bring the light into the space. Even though it’s now closed off.
M : Why is it closed by the way ?
SL : It’s because this is planned to be a black box, so it’s for this exhibition and for the future exhibitions. So what I’ve done is that I made a sculpture, in a material which is pine, pinewood. Pine is a tree growing like everywhere in Innlands in Norway. It needs also a lot of light to grow, so, in that sense it’s some sort of light in a very physical way. And then I removed the parts where the ligtht hit the floor when I was here. So, it’s a poetic gesture, finding the lights in the region innland light embracing the French light.
Soveig Lønseth, ‘at certain hours sunlight falls in oblique lines’, 2017, pinewood, courtesy of the artist
M : This is the place where the light would stop here ?
SL : Yeah if you see like inside there it goes in the angles, where the light came from the window.
M : And will stop there.
SL : Yeah.
M : OK
SL : So it’s the absence
M : Absence of what ?
SL : Of light.
B: Made physical
SL : Made physical
M : Made physicla by this wood.
SL : Yeah.
B : Since she is here now, Linn Pedersen is here, maybe she can speak
M : Sure
Linn Pedersen : So, this is my work. So I have these eight photographies, which is made in different techniques. The black and white photographies with a camera obscura. So I had been working in that sculpture park, for a year, that was located in the south of Norway, in Kristiansand, where I live. And together with Tiril Hasselknippe, and Ann Cathrin November Høibo, we curated this scupltor park, and my sculpture was this big camera obscura, and the pedestal is the groundfloor, like the drawing of the floor, inside the camera. And it was made with this technique where you burn the woods, to keep the… instead of painting. So the camera was like this, and I was working inside that camera, for a year. So the black and white are made inside the camera obscura, I had a lab inside the camera. The blue ones are cyanotypes, like one of the first techniques in photography. So before the black and white it was blue and white. The whole project was inspired by two female pionneers, in photography, Anna Atkins, who was part of developping the cyanotype technique.
Linn Pedersen, ‘Ivory Tower’, 2016-17, (detail), camera obscura photography, analog, cyanotype
And she worked with botanics, flowers and seaweeds. She actually illustrated the first book that was illustrated with photography, or cyanotypes. So she, and Julia Margaret Cameron, a British pioneers in photography, who also used her garden as a studio. So I was very inspired, also because in this period I had my second child and I was more bound to my home. So I was interested in women before having being kind of in the same position where they had to kind of work in their garden, or like in their nearest surroundings in a way. Even though I’m of course much luckier because it’s 2000, you know, we have like equal rights. So I’ve been working with this theme in 2013. So I’ve been working in this park, for a year. This had a been a part of another show, in the Sølandets kunstmuseum, in the South of Norway, where I did the study, with these chairs, these very common chairs in Norway, that you can see everywhere. In the South of Norway they actually banned these chairs, like in restaurants and stuff that is around in the city. Because they think they are so ugly. So the cyanotypes, are also chairs, as you can see with more abstract, so the’yre made also with chairs, on top of this paper, and then, with the UV light on top, so it’s a chair in a abstract form, in a way. And the colour filtered photography is a work, mainly, with the medium formats, they’re scanned.
Ivory Tower, (detail), analog photography, color filtered photography
Linn Pedersen, ‘Ivory Tower’, 2à16-17, plastic chairs, burned wood, courtesy of the artist
Balke : Saman [Kamyab] kind of works with deconstructing images, using them almost as a painting, as a sculpture. This is a photograph. He also uses the printer itself, lets it print until it runs out of ink, the traces of the printer struggling become part of the work, part of the images and objects. And then he also lets the ink dissolve into the material, he drains it into the cardboard, pours resin over to have all these layers and processes create, I would almost say a painting in the end. But also something that is has aspects of mechanical reproduction, because it comes from a file, a photographic file.
M : Quite nice
Saman Kamyab, ‘Confusion (sunrise)’, #1/2/, inkjet prints on transparency film, cardboard, epoxy, aluminium frame
Saman Kamyab, ‘Confusion (sunrise)’, #/3/4, (2017), inkjet prints on transparency film, cardboard, epoxy, aluminium frame
B : [Pointing at the work on the floor] He Has printed these foils through ink printers, and the ink doesn’t sink into the materials itself, it just stays on the surface, so it creates both the image but also just an unpredictable but structured pattern. I think it’s quite interesting, somehow it relates tom me a lot to landscapes seen from above, I just saw it recently, almost like satellite maps. You can read a lot into these, of course. But his work is both about the image and the devices producing them, how the devices influence the chance, the mistake — which brings about something human to it. This is a video of a recorder, a Zoom recorder recording Nature, but Nature is just visible as a blurred image in the background. You don’t hear what is being recorded but you see that it records watching the digital time display, so you are left to imagine the sensual experience of sound.
Saman Kamyab, untitled, REDcode raw, #3/4, (2017), inkjet prints on transparency film, insulation walls, panasonic TH-4-3L
And Kamilla Langeland pictures are really, very physical, large, darkroom prints, that are made both from negatives, — some with microscope images, for example of a data chip – and then she lays things on top objects themselves, like this chain for example. So its actually a photogram, a picture in a picture, and an object, and then a drawing on top of that. And the prints are left in this direct form straight from the development, without flattening it out for an exhibition. You can see all the marks and creases from the process. They are displayed in these big frames that are much bigger than her, and heavy!
Kamilla Langeland, ‘charmer n°2’, 2016, hand printed silver gelatin baryta prints, photo oil, oil pastel, gold leaf, magnetic hematite, courtesy of the artist
Kamilla Langeland, ‘charmer n°3’, 2016, hand printed silver gelatin baryta prints, photo oil, oil pastel, gold leaf, magnetic hematite, courtesy of the artist
So Ahmad [Ghossein] is an artist from Lebanon, who has spent a lot of time in Norway. He’s living in South Lebanon. And the work that we see here is about several narratives, or characters you might say. One of them is a magician, Chico, that he travelled with when he was a child himself. Ahmad also gives a lecture about this work, which is a work in itself, it’s part of it – and there he talks about this magician, a ventriloquist, who goes from trying to be taken seriously as a magician, to performing at a moment of greater religious conservatism where there is no room for magic. Rather than being laughed at he becomes feared and… there is suspicion towards it. So he parallels this moment with a narrative of discovering these sculptures that start appearing in the landscape around him, big monuments, huge sculptures, and trying to understand where they come from. They are seemingly war monuments. He starts to question them; how they look, who made them, why they are there. A unique thing about them is that they are clearly designed with the birds-eye view perspective in mind. So he also films them from above, with a drone taking off from the monument and rising ever higher. A third character is you might say the landscape, or Ahmad himself, moving through the story. So it’s a story about magic and belief being replaced by political mythology, belief systems replacing one another and the conflict between them.
Three still photographic images of the‘The Fourth Stage’, a video by Ahmad Ghossein
She (Ann Cathrin Høibo)… in some ways her practice comes from a background working with textiles, with weaving. But here you can see this more I think in that she is highly focused on the make-up of the textiles, of the material itself. I think that her work is very rooted in the contemporary moment, and is related to her own body, as a human being living in her own time. In this framed work she is directly showing a material in itself, as a character and presence in this black space. Here we have a leatherette, a strong red leatherette, present in this room as an intense colour, with a patterned surface, a fake leather. So it’s sort of dead as a material, ageless. I think she has a very fine tuned sensibility for the characteristics of objects, and where they belong in relation to each other, and in our cultural sensitivities and how we read them. Like here: is it domestic, is it public? Are the colours comforting? Ugly? You have these two glowing balls of light, and I can only speak for myself of course, remind me of certain lamps that you got for you teenage room, certain lamps that you have in your home, I think many people recognize this, here they become just like glowing balls, orbs. And the shelves, here, have the red, yellow and blue garments, neatly folded in each drawer. I think sometimes her sculptures themselves are like a portrait of a person. Here you have the shoes at the bottom, and then the bubble wrap. So each material has its own character; sticky, pink, shiny black, plastic… They give their own indication of physicality, of corporeality, of narrative. But I don’t think her work is narrative in an explanatory way, I think it leaves a lot open. Just the associations of how it works on you, allows you to create a story that I think, very often relates to a body. I feel like her installations often come alive through the presence of a physical body there with them : almost challenging you to sit down, measure yourself against, pick up – but with the knowledge that you cannot. They are functional but then at the same time, just left there to be present with you, not to be used.
Ann Cathrin Høibo, ‘Don’t step on the cables’, 2017, don de l’artiste et STANDARD (Oslo)
The exhibition ‘Innland’ was also commissioned by Élodie Stroecken, who actually works at the CCCOD. I had a telephone interview with her, which we can read now:
Léon Mychkine : So, I wanted to have an interview with you, since you have also co-curated the exhibition ‘Innland’.
Stroecken : Yes indeed. I am co-curator with Thora Dolven Balke. I quickly realized that she had this kind of multi-purpose capacities that a lot of Norwegian artists are gifted with, and that she might play an important rôle in the building-up of the exhibition.
M : Yes
S : Because, a lot of artists have decided, from the early 90’s, to take control of their own work, during a period where very few cultural institutions, museums, centers of art, did show the work of emerging artists. Hence artists have decided to show their own spaces of exhibitions, of diffusion and production of their works. This is what has been called the first wave of Artist run-Spaces, spaces managed by artists, for the artist. The artists which we present in the ‘Innland’ exhibition are rather artists of the second Artist run-Spaces generation, who have benefited of all the work done by the previous generation. Here, we have artists aged between 25 and 40, with an ongoing international career, and who have benefited these dense Norwegian networks in which artists support each other, show their works, make exhibitions, the kind of you can see in a museum or a center of art. For ‘Innland’, everything has begun when Alain Julien-Laferrière decided to program an exhibition about the production of Debré in Norway. He thought that, in the Galerie Noire, that we should present what is actually going on, what is the most contemporary in Norway. Which artists are part of the new generation? And, rather than doing an exhibition with strictly Norwegian artists, or to try to define the young artistic scene of the country, we realized that it made no sense today, the will to do the same with the young French artistic scene would be vain, for example, because we cannot put a label or categorize clumsily a young artistic scene country by country. At some point, it doesn’t make sense. Hence we decided to show what was going on on the Norwegian artistic scene. The artists are of different origins; one is born in Lithuania, one in Iran, another in Lebanon. Many have studied in Norway, but also abroad. This generation travels a lot, and is very aware of what’s going on on the world art scene. And the exhibition is very diverse, there are a lot of different media: photo, video, sculpture, installation, sound, etc. We really wanted that this exhibition would be at the image of this scene and testifies of this mixing. It is indeed extremely diverse, with particular practices, with various approaches and sensibilities, etc. We present eleven artists in this exhibition, which all show different and various works.
M : OK. And then, how did you chose the artists? How did you manage to select the artists, because I figure that there are others in Norway.
S : Indeed, we could not bring everybody. An exhibition, it is every time a sum of choices which resulted from particular criteria. Here, what has us interested was to have a dual point of view, one of Thora Dolven Balke, who is inside this scene, and who herself showed some of the artists in this exhibition, because she has herself build up and programmed an Artist run-Space, called Rekord, in Olso, years ago. She was at school with some of them. But this selection has been also processed through a French institution, which discovers the work of these artists.
M : Yes.
S : These are Thora’s choices and mine, in order to get a diversity of propositions, a quality, and some personal and relevant approaches come to shore. An exhibition is always something extremely subjective. It was no question of building up a historical and exhaustive exhibition, for which we could not have anyway any sufficient retrospect in regard to the contemporaneity of this production. These are personal choices from curators which express themselves. Personnally, it seemed important to me to present this diversity, when for example it came about photography, because it is extremely present on this young artistic scene, I wanted to emphasize these diverse approaches, whether they be very plastic, very contemporaneous, in the sense that some photographs are using only digital technologies, or, some others, entirely conceptual.
M : Alright
S : This is also a lot of meetings with the artists, that is, I’ve been three times in Norway, during a year. I met them, we discussed, and, finally we decided not to show some works, because there need to be a global coherence in the exhibition. This does not mean that the artists that we have not selected are bad artists! This being part of the final process in the composition of the exhibition.
M : Yes, of course. So, by the way, what is the coherence?
S : We thought that this coherence in regard to the nature of the scene. In trying to be faithful to the state of mind which inhabits it. We chose this title, ‘Innland’, with Thora, because it had several acceptions which are appealing to us. Both because it refers to Norway, because this is a Norwegian term which defines the interior of a territory. We then had this idea to plunge into these lands, to see what comes up, but, at the same time, it raises the question of what I was saying earlier, that of the national characteristic of this artistic scene, since we do not limit ourselves to the borders. And it is mainly a term which allows us to explore the more personal and subjective notion of ‘Innland’, and interior territory. The artists of the exhibition share a high sensibility, beyond the plastic and aesthetic aspect of their works, which is very important. We realize that, behind abstraction, behind installations, there is an entire history, a personal landscape, which asks itself to develop. These are secret territories which are proposed the visitor to walk trough.
M : Alright. Therefore, the common ground is ‘sensibility’?
S : I would say that there is an exacerbated form of sensibility, and an aesthetic which is very advanced. This is also what is common, I find, in the artists’ approaches: there is a real research on the image. These artists, the same generation as mine, people in their thirties, showered with images, all day long, totally saturated, who took side on decelerating, to pause, and question on the way how to build a picture, each one them, with a different approach, and this concern either photography, but also video, sound, etc. How different stratum come to position, one on another, to build a work of art. How we take time, to compose an image, like a painting, and not simply gathering some elements to use in their work.
M : Alright.
S : Sometimes, there are some artists who come back to ancient techniques. For example, Kamilla Langeland, who almost substitutes herself to the camera, she’s physically engaged in the creation of each of her pictures, she closes up herself into a black box [i.e., camera obscura] to compose her canvas. In her pictures, we find some Pre-Columbian figures, issued from a civilization which relied on the subconscious in their beliefs. And she sets a real dialogue between the way these civilizations did proceed and the way she composes her pictures; with the idea that this subconscious intervenes, and that things create one after another, stratum by stratum, for composing a surprising image.
M : When you say that she sets herself in her canvas, what does it mean?
S : Basically, she dimensions her photo paper to her body proportions, choosing the sheets of paper which measure 1,50 metro high, because if she’d take bigger ones, she could not manipulate them, and she closes herself up into a dark room. She immerges them into a chemical bath solution and process the prints, according to several procedures. It is a real physical engagement for her since the whole process of development is assumed by her body, in a simple manner, archaic like.
M : Yes, she sets herself inside a camera obscure which has the length of a room, in fact.
S : Exactly. Kamilla is in her last year at Bergen school, which is famous for its department of photography, and she benefited at some time of a studio so as to realize her imprints.
M : Hence, from this aesthetic, photographic perspective, how does the work of November Høibo inscribes itself in the Salle Noire?
S : Ann Cathrin November Høibo is among the most renowned Norwegian artists of her generation, and she is internationally recognized.
M : Yes.
S : She inscribes herself in this tradition of vanguardist women who practice the textile. She learned to weave, with one them. November Høibo inscribes herself in this tradition, but she uses it and has a vision completely different of the textile art, contemporaneous. This is shown both in the choice of textiles she makes, because, as you saw in her installation, it is not question of exhibiting some weaved materials, indeed these are cloth which she reuses. She chooses some second hand clothes which have different fabric, with different colors, etc.; and she stages them, in her installations. We often have the feeling that these installations are a transposition of her workshop. I’ve been in her workshop in Kristiansand, and I realize that she was a great collector. We find in ‘Innland’ her shelves, in which se stores cloth, just like a painter would with his color tubes. She has a phenomenal collection of clothes. She selects them and lays them out in her installations, from which we have the feeling she just went out. As if she had just left the stage, and letting us feel the sensations, these games with materials and colors, which constitute a big sculpture. She plays on the tactility, sensuality and the colors of the materials. This is a work with an exacerbated sensibility.
M : And, by the way, why will this Galerie always be black?
S : The ‘Galerie Noire’ [Black Gallery] is a space in which we will present some contemporary artists. It will be about monograph or collective exhibitions. It is a space which has been thought as such by the architects. Each space of exhibition has been thought in regard to the needs of artists and their work. The ‘Galerie Noire’ corresponds to artists who aim at exhibit some video, photo… It has been thought as a platform, 450 square meters, dedicated to the production and experimentation of the artists. But this is a space which can also be not totally black, since its four windows can remain non shattered down. Indeed, each proposition will be different, and I hope that they will be able to surprise the visitors so as to bring them in a different atmosphere and landscape.
A few impressions. As emphasized by E. Stroecken, the exhibition insists on the image, the processed image, as well as the false old ones (Pedersen, Langeland), or technological (Kaman). But the term ‘image’ must also be taken in the metaphorical sense: for example, which image do we get from November Høibo’s installation ? With her, we could speak about covering and appearance. November Høibo seems to practice a form of art which I would qualify as literal, even if we see, and this is said here, that she focuses much on details. Inversely, we have the poetic gesture of Solveigh Lønseth, which calls on to the presence of light, materialized by the missing part of the wood. Balke’s piece is also poetic, in the sens that, she naïvely, as it were, sets horizontally some photographs which where originally vertical, supposing that the bodies are going somehow to escape from the frame? which, if we follow this proposition, leads logically to the dissemination of bodies, which we find in Parts 2 and 3 of her work. I think that, from a general point of view, we have here a literality at work: the artists do not necessarily aim at producing something too abstracted from the real; they seem rather attached to reality, which, by the way, does not forbid poetry. This poetry, as an optical matter, and not literary speaking, is to put on the real another impression, almost faithful. This impression is all the more faithful since the aim is also political, an aspect which appears in the words and images of Balke, Hasselknippe, and Ghossein, for instance.
1. Tiril Hasselknippe told me that she sees her sculptures as political. As indicated, these are balconies, but for Hasselknippe these balconies have fallen to the ground, and they’re all of what’s left of a post-apocalyptic world. Hence the balconies are used for different purposes, such as cleaning.
PS: All the photographs in this article have been shot and processed by Léon Mychkine.
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