Nordin Gallery Catalogue 17 - Henrik Eriksson

Nordin Gallery Exhibition No 17 | 2009

Henrik Eriksson Marble 5 November — 6 December

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Henrik Eriksson Marble

Nordin Gallery Exhibition No 17 | 2009

Henrik Eriksson b. 1976, Tväråmark, Sweden

Svenska

English

Nordin Gallery har det stora nöjet att presentera Henrik Erikssons utställning Marble.

Nordin Gallery is excited to present Henrik Eriksson’s exhibition Marble.

Henrik Eriksson är född i Västerbotten 1976 och är bland annat utbildad vid Kungl. Konsthögskolan i Stockholm som delvis finansierat teknikutvecklingen för de arbeten med nedsmält aluminium som visas i utställningen. Henrik Eriksson har de senaste åren gjort ett flertal utställningar på såväl kommersiella som konstnärsdrivna gallerier och på offentliga institutioner, men har också tillsammans med kollegor startat och drivit galleriet ak28 2003-2008. Utställningen Marble består av resultat från tre arbetsprocesser som efter fysiska och intellektuella utflykter närmat sig måleri. Men fältet av referenser och tekniker är fortfarande brett och lekfullt - ett kännetecken för ett konstnärskap som drivs av en ständig nyfikenhet på omvärlden.

Henrik Eriksson was born in Västerbotten in 1976 and is educated at the Royal University College of Fine Arts in Stockholm, which partly financed the development of technique used in the works rendered with aluminum as in the exhibition. In recent years Henrik Eriksson has made a number of exhibitions in both commercial and artist-run galleries and public institutions, but was also a co-founder and co-director of the artist run gallery ak28 the years 2003-2008. The exhibition Marble consists of results from three work processes where physical and intellectual excursions seem to end up close to painting practices. But the field of associations and techniques are still wide and playful - a sign of an oeuvre that is driven by a constant curiosity about the outside world.

Texten i katalogen är skriven av Diana Kaur.

The text in the catalogue is written by Diana Kaur.

Marble Text: Diana Kaur, Freelance Curator and Writer Dear Henrik, I would like to visit your studio again. This time I would like to record our conversation. I believe that it would add a dimension to the text if I insert extracts from our conversation. Besides the apparent alchemical allure of the text collage, I hope it becomes possible to articulate something different when the text is overlayered with what you said, what I said, and in juxtaposing the text with documentation stills from the production process. What do you think?

Shall we try it?

Yes. When is good?

Henrik Eriksson works in a variety of media that include photography, sculpture and installation. He has built a snow-blitz-machine that refers to and plays with the notion of natural disasters and blockbuster-movies, he has inverted the disco ball as idea and object into split sculls and the last gasps of planets. When Henrik Eriksson made strictly depicting drawings of his home - led by his wandering gaze and the mood of his hand - they ended up somewhere between modernistic abstraction and white pencil-noise. In all image development he has a constant dialogue with painterly concerns.

Right: Field Painting, Skärholmen Övergård. 2008

Nordin Gallery Exhibition No 17 | 2009

I gave up painting around 1963 and began to work plastics in a kind of crystalline way. I began to develop structures based on a particular concern with the elements of the material itself. Said Robert Smithson in a late interview.

Fallen Painting, how does that sound for a title? Christian? That might be the title for the large aluminum painting. It might work formally, like I sawed out a large piece of an interior wall and after the fall put it back up, leaning against another wall. The title is from a work by Lynda Benglis who made a series of floor paintings, this was in the late 60-ties.

Janine Antonis Loving Care, the gallery performance from 1992, where she painted the floor with black hair-dye using her own long hair as paintbrush or mop. Painted the visitors into a corner.

Left: Fallen Painting. 2008

Though it’s true, there is a Robert Smithson and a Jackson Pollock too.

In the Youtube-link that you sent me Francis Bacon quotes himself having said It looks like a bit of lace about Jackson Pollocks paintings. He claims the comment as a reason for never achieving proper recognition in America.

The metonymy lends itself reluctantly to visual arts but Henrik Eriksson addresses this evasive trope, asking it to meet him at the crossing of the material and its connotations; historic as well as contemporary. Behind this summoning lies an idea and a method he wants to try.

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You collect expert knowledge from different fields and throughout the work process you keep combining it according to an interdisciplinary logic. A metallic element such as aluminum - or as in this case - discarded gearboxes, engine parts and rims, are melted down and flung onto large sheets of plasterboard on the ground. It’s an act that requires a somewhat dynamic approach, but you bypass the inherent mannerisms of the material and perform a… playful gesture? You are throwing aluminum. When I look at the documentation I see wilfull curiosity and tenderness towards the material rather than forceful expression of intuitive precision. Rather than the pursuit of a preconceived result - an understanding for the material and its connotations is pursued. I’m thinking about these do-it-yourself web pages, like backyardmetalcasting.com about how to build your own dirt and brick furnace – like you did – or a two-ton lifting hoist for the heavy-duty jobs in your backyard.

This whole world is incredibly macho but at the same time nerdy, eccentric and marginalised.

Well, that is how my interests are negotiated, since am I deeply influenced by Lynda Benglis? No, not really. Am I interested in car dumps? No. But in combining them they bring each other into question. But that’s not enough to make it interesting for me, I see it necessary to play with a set of different variables when making a work or building an exhibition.

A narrative from A to B, two coordinates, can communicate a lot but it’s always in some sense one-way. You need three or four coordinates to establish a surface, to provide a space for the viewer to step into or to raise a tent. The variables must be linearly independent, in other words: the tent poles must be separated and with enough distance from each other to create a stabile and sufficient tent. That’s how I see my work as an artist: as contributing towards a polyphonic knowledge production. In the case of this show at Nordin I want to include some of my photographic works from the series Norrlandskusten. They represent a set of office-type crafts, clean ones, and by including them I’m hoping to extend the referential space of the exhibition. They are a crossbreed between analogue drawing and digital photo-techniques, yet connected to the other works as images on the border of painting.

Previous page: Left: Fallen Painting. 2009 Right: Loving Care. 2009 Left: “It looks like a bit of a lace”. 2009 (Detail)

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Left to right: From “Norrlandskusten (Coast of Northern Sweden) 21/12/2007”. 2009

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Nordin Gallery Exhibition No 17 | 2009

Left: Norrlandskusten (Coast of Northern Sweden) 21/12/2007, 4:3. 2009

Your graduate project was titled Heaven can wait, after a 1980-ties hit song by Sandra. The last sentence in the catalogue text reads: “(…) resultatet är inte i första hand njutbar trädgårdskonst utan ett påpekande av föremålsvärldens rika komplexitet i en tid som genomsyras både av simuleringarnas hegemoni och en känsla av otillräcklighet inför det fiktivas möjligheter.” I think it’s moving in that it conveys a deep wonder for the material realm while at the same time expressing a concern about how to formulate alternatives. I think this has developed into

a considerate yet highly critical interplay with a world that is still struggling to uphold strict divisions between fields of knowledge, and how they are articulated and applied. In your practice works traverse many different fields of knowledge that are isolated from each other, and incarnate the possibility of simultaneous dialogue in all of them.

I think I’ll call the exhibition “Marble”, it sounds almost like “marvel” but it is worldly and material.

“I think I’ll call the exhibition “Marble”, it sounds almost like “marvel” but it is worldly and material.”

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Left to right: Marble 1. 2009 (Detail) Marble 2. 2009 (Detail) Marble 3. 2009

Marble Exhibition Inventory

Fallen Painting 2009 Aluminum, filler and paint on plaster and steel wall 360 x 270 cm

Norrlandskusten (Coast of Northern Sweden) 21/12/2007, 3:1 2009 C-print 90 x 67 cm Edition 3 + 2 ap

“It looks like a bit of a lace� 2009 Aluminum, filler and paint on plaster and steel wall 190 x 200 cm

Norrlandskusten (Coast of Northern Sweden) 21/12/2007, 3:2 2009 C-print 90 x 67 cm Edition 3 + 2 ap

Loving Care 2009 Aluminum, filler and paint on plaster and steel wall 75 x 300 cm

Norrlandskusten (Coast of Northern Sweden) 21/12/2007, 4:2 2009 C-print 90 x 67 cm Edition 3 + 2 ap

Marble 1. 2009 Hammarite and oil on galvanised steel 83 x 125 cm

Norrlandskusten (Coast of Northern Sweden) 21/12/2007, 4:3 2009 C-print 90 x 67 cm Edition 3 + 2 ap

Marble 2. 2009 Hammarite and oil on galvanised steel 83 x 125 cm

Norrlandskusten (Coast of Northern Sweden) 21/12/2007, 5:7 2009 C-print 90 x 67 cm Edition 3 + 2 ap

Marble 3. 2009 Hammarite and oil on galvanised steel 83 x 125 cm Marble 4. 2009 Hammarite and oil on galvanised steel 83 x 125 cm

Nordin Gallery Tulegatan 19 SE –113 53 Stockholm Tel +46(0)706 934 528 info@nordingallery.com www.nordingallery.com

Opening Hours Thursday – Friday 12.00 –17.00 Saturday – Sunday 12.00 –16.00 Or by appointment

Price: 40 SEK