Absent Bodies

I'm opening a show in Oslo at OSL Contemporary in a couple of weeks I've curated, entitled Absent Bodies. I'm including the work of these artists: Caroline Achaintre, Ida Ekblad, Sebastian Lloyd Rees, Laurence Owen, Aude Pariset and Tori Wranes.

Here's some more info about the idea:

How do you capture an action? Documentation of performance art has often focused on the photographic or filmic in an attempt to recreate something transitory. Here the fleeting experienced whole is reduced to a static view or a single perspective. Absent Bodies takes the idea of performance as a starting point, exploring ways to portray or reflect action. Here the body in movement is missing. Instead we are left with props and costume, stand-in elements that reflect process and action.

In the work of Caroline Achaintre, Ida Ekblad, Sebastian Lloyd Rees, Laurence Owen, Aude Pariset and Tori Wranes, we feel the presence of the artists’ hands. The pieces brought together here have involved direct action. There is a tactility, a freedom of touch. Materiality is central to these objects, from latex to paint, ceramic to fabric. Touch is one of the most immediate ways humanity understands the world. The haptic is intertwined with perception. The work here is textured, bumpy, layered, wildly applied emphasising an artwork and artist’s physical engagement in space.

Although some of the works on show hint towards the figurative, the body itself is missing. We are left with humanoid holes and marks. Instead of the body, we are left with an aftershock. There result is a stage where the set, not the players, perform.