Please don’t deceive me when I hurt you; It just ain’t the way it seems…

Karl Holmqvist, Die Dame, 2008
Courtesy: the artist and dépendance

This post is an extension of that one.

Dancing on the Ceiling: Art & Zero Gravity, is a major group exhibition in which contemporary artists explore—and on occasion recreate—the condition of weightlessness on earth. The exhibition will present the work of multiple national and international artists, including three newly commissioned pieces for the exhibition. Distributed throughout the public spaces in the building the exhibition is itself un-tethered from the confines of the traditional gallery exhibition paradigm.

Arts Catalyst • Benjamin Bergmann • Denis Darzacq • Edith Dekyndt • Chris Doyle • William Forsythe • Julia Fullerton-Batten • Thom Kubli • Tomás Saraceno • Jane & Louise Wilson • Xu Zhen

Dancing on the Ceiling will bring together artworks that use the metaphor of floating or weightlessness as an expression of the relationship of the individual to social, political or personal contexts. In addition, several of the pieces relate to lightness as akin to an agility of mind, freed of entrenched perspectives.

Curated by Kathleen Forde, Curator of Time-Based Arts, the exhibition will be accompanied by an exhibition catalog including essays by Italo Calvino as well as interviews with commissioned artists Chris Doyle and Thom Kubli.

The exhibition is also contextualized by a series of related performances, talks, films, and events; see the schedule for complete information.

Robert Longo, “Men in the Cities”, 1980s

NB: Don’t miss Aaron Schuster’s essay on levitation, love, and space sex in SB5!

During the stretching sessions of my dance courses, I often happen to broadcast Grace Jones’ Corporate Cannibal piece and while working on the elongation of specific muscles & muscle group, I ask my students to focus on the experience of fascination, which I interpret to be at the crossroads of the imaginary and the corporeal.
Rather than asking how one would have to define the ontological status of fascination, I actually wonder why fascination proves to be a paradigm “par excellence” to cover, that is to say, both nominate and legitimate, contemporary artistic experience?

Pleased to meet you, pleased to have you on my plate
your meat is sweet to me
your destiny
your fate

i’m the spark, make the world explode
i’m a man-eating machine, i’ll make the world explode
corporate cannibal…

Yesterday, we had the pleasure to attend Jean-Luc Verna’s performance at the opening of the Black Mirror exhibition, at théâtre de l’Arsenic, Lausanne.

Cross-posted on Novembre Magazine.

Erik Tidemann is a 28-yr-old artist from Trondheim, Norway. His white trash-influenced work ranges from sleazy paintings, to taxidermy-based sculpture; a unique aesthetic reflected in his rapidly expanding tattoo collection. This is just a short interview via email but I’d love to pull together a full-length feature on the up-and-coming Slade graduate in the near future. More work to come.

”I am mostly inspired by subcultures from neo-Nazis, KKK and extreme black metal to black people’s movements, Somalian immigrant gangs and gangster rap. But the redneck white trash hillbilly culture has been the one I have been studying the most. I often mixed  those scenarios with mythic, demonic and often religious imagery. So often the work with its own context show the mythic picture of the undepicted artist as some alter ego of myself. Like I was some weirdo loner living in my mom’s basement never learnt to make art or think in concepts but just being there as some Daniel Johnston dude making his imaginary world.

”My Latest project or the one I am working on now is to make two black Canadian bears standing on two legs. They are gonna have their torsos completely shaved and tattooed while the skin is still soft. Instead of the bear faces I am gonna replace the face area of the head with a human skull on each one. My dentist who is also one of my collectors is helping me out getting the real human skulls and doing the paperwork which is cool of him. In the eyes I will have some sort of light. The two bears are gonna be for this club in Trondheim standing on each side of the DJ table holding it up with their hands. So they look as some sort of guardians up on the stage.

”Except from that I am showing my five headed wolf called ‘Nazi super science’ at Trondheim Art Museum in May and me and the American street sculptor Brad Downey is making a piece this summer together for this outside sculpture park in Norway. We want to make two trees standing in the ground as ground to air missiles so we want to hollow out the inside of the trees and replace them with a rocket fuelled core so they can be shot up in the air. Like the forest is going nuts decaring war or something. In October I have a solo show in Trondheim too.

”Tattoos? Yes. Did a one last Friday under my arm. It was a woman lying on her back with her big tits pointing up and wearing stockings. She cant walk since she has cocks instead of feet like wooden legs but they are flesh. Instead of a cunt she has the SS logo from the Nazis standing for sleazy sluts. Above her head she has green drunken letters saying Øoohboh.

”That was my last one. Except from that one I have most of my neck, troat, right arm, chest and stumack and feet covered. And some bits and bubs elsewere. But I guess I will have a full body suit someday. Its easy since my friends are all tattooists here in Trondheim so we trade back and forward our favours.”

Portraits by Linn Heidi Stokkedal

http://www.myspace.com/eriktidemann