Girl, interrupted!
Anne Guro Larsmon
Soaked ChloĂŠ.
Lavare.
Dying honey.
Solo exhibition by Anne Guro Larsmon Opening performance & text by Marthe Ramm Fortun
Dancing and dispersing, a m a ss i n g a n d b e c o m i n g . Geir Haraldseth
The tendency to read a work of art as biographical is incredibly tempting at times. Andy Warhol, the character, is rarely left out when looking at, exactly, a Warhol. Jackson Pollock comes to mind as a figure hard to omit when looking, thinking, or writing about his paintings. We are constantly reminded of the artist in representations in photos, movies, and the stories told, let alone the work in itself. Tracy Emin employs autobiography actively in her work and the artist’s biography becomes a genre and a medium in its own right as Emin veers through stereotypical renditions of the artist, mixed in with soap opera scenarios, sex, and confessions. It’s hard to see a sculpture, print, or drawing by Louise Bourgeois and not think of the artist’s biographical writing. The artist’s biography is still a subject met with great interest by many, but what of a young artist’s first solo exhibition? Are we allowed a peek into the world of Anne Guro Larsmon in her solo exhibition, Girl, Interrupted! ? Looking at the works themselves, curious constellations of debris, found materials, doorways, posts and pillars, some more poetic than another, some more unbelievable than others, there is not much that tells you anything about the artist’s biography. At least not at first sight. The materials selected by Larsmon look like they belong somewhere in the past, like they have been ripped from time and space to be reconfigured here in the exhibition space. The items in the room have belonged at some point to some time. Maybe a door from a house, tiles from a bathroom, or a cane from an elderly person. The materials have been selected and picked to represent form in unison with the other materials and the other works in the exhibition. Form that point to art history, to design, to personal space, and to poetics. And to Larsmon herself. The artist has developed a sense of joining and constellation that can be read in context of her generation of artists, as many are avid interpreters of the personal and general subtexts, but Larsmon often underlines the particularly personal, which is a great strength. While similar formal qualities and interests can be found in the work of other artists, there is something more vulnerable in Larsmon’s work. Some artists might be more clear and obvious in shapes and choice of materials, while Larsmon infuses her work with romance, loss, and melancholy. The title of the show refers to a painting by Vermeer, “Girl Interrupted at Her Music,” from c. 1658-1661. The painting shows
a girl studying sheets of music with an instructor or a possible suitor leaning over the girl. The girl is not paying any intention to the instructor, but rather looks over her shoulder and acknowledges the painter and creates a situation of uncertainty for the viewer. Is she looking at the painter or at us? The subject of the painting is interacting with the painter, if not us, making us aware of our own stance in front of the painting, but also to consider the painter painting. Larsmon has shortened the title of the exhibition to Girl, Interrupted! adding an excited exclamation mark! The shortened version strays from the art historical reference and leads us to a more popular and recent reference. The movie, “Girl Interrupted”, from 1996, is a harrowing account of coming of age, madness, and friendship between a group of young girls in an institution. It’s easy to draw the lines to Larsmon herself in both references. The girl in Vermeer’s painting is rupturing her restricted role as a subject and turns the painting into an intriguing personal case, something many artists are still trying to figure out to this day and age. In the case of the movie, it’s a story of finding one’s way in the world, and the protagonist in the movie uses painting and music as therapeutic tools to encounter and restructure the world. I’m not insinuating that Larsmon has been receiving therapy, spent time in an institution or taken lessons to learn how to play a musical instrument with a suitor behind her, but this is exactly the push and pull offered by such connotations. Is Larsmon the girl in the painting trying to find her way, or is she the painter, pulling the strings and setting the scenarios? The artist is certainly willing to be playful in this situation, by adding an exclamation mark, changing the potential trauma of interrupting a subject, being formed, into a statement, perhaps an emancipatory shout of triumph. The sculptures in the exhibition can all be read as scenarios, or even a larger unified scenario with many sets, or stories. The sets might be pulled from Larsmon’s own life, but they suggest a passing, and a story. The scent of a perfume bottle will fill the room at the opening, but slowly dissipates over time. That’s entropy, but Larsmon uses our olfactory sense to spin tales, seduce and narrate the exhibition, instead of showing us decay by more terminal means a la Smithson. If we follow the trail of information left by the press release, we find that the scent was used by Larsmon’s mother, who died while Larsmon was still a young girl, interrupted. The presence of the mother’s smell
dissipates, and all that is left are the bottles of perfume and their exquisite pumps. There is an upward movement in the exhibition. Many of the sculptures consist of cylinders and pillars that connect to elongate and reach. They are made out of steel or wood, like Hesitation Walz, consisting of bars from a banister. There’s a wooden beam covered with white tiles, leaning over and tilting. It’s heavy and clunky. There are three metal rods fitted with door handles on top, ready to open if you can reach them. Like a small child wanting to repeat the patterns of a mother, to play, to reach, something out of reach, something unattainable. The scenarios are referencing those moments from childhood, where things are so close, yet so far away, not just objects of desire, but concepts of life, where you enter a room, or look up a flight of stairs or down the basement, trying to grasp your position in the world and identity is constructed. If we return to Vermeer’s painting of the girl, interrupted, it is easy to forget that the motif is actually a domestic set, inside a room, with chairs, a table, a window, a painting and other everyday items. The items are clearly not just items, but act as symbols, cluing us in on status, values, stories and hinting at the person’s person. Larsmon is doing the same in this exhibition, but effectively destroying the links to the every day world, by disassembling items and mementos into materials, extending and re-accumulating them in a dramatic setting. The narrative in the exhibition is seductive on many levels, through smell and constellations, and we are invited along to dance, perhaps a waltz, where Larsmon is leading the way.
4 situations Marthe Ramm Fortun
Something lingers in this room, caught in the simulacrum of objectmemory-history. The momentary interruption is soft like a mothers scolding. Harsh words seem a token of care in her absence, demonic when she is near. Words are spoken in secret, to encompass a series of domestic rules. Who will maintain these rituals; rearrange the furniture, keepsake traditions? Girl, not-so-comely now.
The artist herself is part of the simulacrum, caught in a love affair with the commodity. There is no shape or logic to the past 100 years. A century of violence is transformed into sweeping movements with specific gestures and facial expressions. If this room is a home, it is womb bound and possessible like a Picasso painting. The artist interrupts this space with her image.
The Peeping Tom animates the space, adding its scents to her vocabulary. Objecthood relies on an observer to transcend into reality. Soaked in it, this manifestation is killing the totem and re-creating it in one sweeping movement. The text is supported by a desire for something outside the body. The palimpsest could be a flowered wallpaper, a backdrop for your fading presence.
Beauty forces itself on the sharp structure of anti-aesthetics, inverting the subject. Like a spread in the New York Post, the images are spilling, pouring onto text. Fresh type ink smudges the door handle, negotiating the neutrality of the gallery space. True to this coalition of object-memory-history, Vermeer painted his subjects as startled deer. She adds movement to his brushstrokes.
Hesitation Waltz, 2010. Found objects on wooden plate. 50 x 25 x 100 cm.
Soaked ChloĂŠ II, 2010. Perfume on wooden shelf. 45 x 21 x 70 cm.
High heels, 2010. Door handle & found wood. Dimensions variable.
Ohne titel , 2010. Pipes, door handles & wood. 50 x 25 x 150 cm.
Kr端mmt, 2010. Found metal. 110 x 110 cm.
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Installation view I: Ohne titel, 2010. High heels, 2010. Soaked Chloé II, 2010. Hesitation Waltz, 2010. Installation view II: Soaked Chloé I, 2010. Krümmt, 2010. Boom. Bloom. Blossom, 2010. Installation view III: Lavare I, 2010. Lavare II, 2010. Wooden pole & tiles. 10 x 10 x 200 cm.
Soaked Chloé I, 2010. Wood soaked in perfume. 30 x 30 x 170 cm.
Dying honey, 2010. Found wood lubricated in honey. Dimensions variable.
Boom. Bloom. Blossom, 2010. Framed wallpaper & steel legs. 50 x 90 cm.
Lavare I, 2010. Wooden pole & door handle. 10 x 10 x 150 cm.
Anne Guro Larsmon (b. 1981) in Finnskogen, Norway. Lives and works in Oslo and Berlin. Larsmon is a graduate from Bergen National Academy of the Arts and Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design. Recent exhibitions include Post Puberty with artist Emma Wright, Podium (Oslo). We are the world, Roots & Culture Contemporary Art Center (Chicago) and TEMPO Skien, Telemark Art Center (Skien). Larsmon has recently finished her Norway Office for Contemporary Arts residency at Kunst-Werke (Berlin). She has also been appointed with an artist studio residency for 5 years by the Arts Council of Oslo at R책dmannsg책rden. Marthe Ramm Fortun (b. 1978) is a graduate from New York University. She lives and works in Oslo and New York. Her performances have been presented at venues such as SculptureCenter (NY), Jessica Silverman Gallery (SF) and Unge Kunstneres Samfund (Oslo). This January, she starts a 5 month long performance series at Vestlandsutstillingen 2011 in collaboration with New York artists Kari Adelaide and Juliet Jacobson. Larsmon and Ramm Fortun are currently working together on the upcoming show Joseph Beuys was a feminist.
STYX Press Publication No 3 This catalogue was published on the occasion of the exhibition: Anne Guro Larsmon Girl, Interrupted! 3–22 December 2010 STYX Projects Berlin Curator Michael Rade Text Geir Haraldseth Marthe Ramm Fortun Photos Leo Kaufmann Layout Andreas Knag-Danielsen © 2010 Anne Guro Larsmon © 2010 STYX Projects/STYX Press All rights reserved.
STYX Press Publication No 3