29.10 – 2.11.2020
Cold Sweat: Graduation Show 2020
De Dood, Slaghoedje 52, Zaandam, 10:00-20:00, by invitation only ): and masks are required (:
Veronika Babayan, Constantin Dichtl, Janina Fritz, Natalia Jordanova, Cóilín O’Connell, Octave Rimbert-Rivière, Sara Santana López, Sophia Simensky and Linda Stauffer.
‘On Flatness and Of Roundness: Reflections on the exhibition by Sophie T. Lvoff’
Two street performers are at odds with one another, in a turf war in Times Square. One is painted entirely gold, and the other is silver: cheap suits, shoes, rolling suitcases and all. They pose as statues for selfies in quasi-precision for a couple dollars a pop. There’s not enough space for the both of them, they quarrel, and their contrasting metallic paint is mixed, ruining their respective mono-metal-tone, tarnishing the facade and bringing these characters down to earth like two subway rats fighting over a pizza crust.
Why must there be such an obvious contention between noble materials? Because it’s a movie, babe.
In similitude, and in subsequent harmony, Cold Sweat offers a thesis on the (il)logic of opposing descriptors: flatness and roundness. The nine artists in this exhibition demonstrate these terms in their artistic production during a time when our collective reality is based on other vexing polarities: sick or not sick, zoomed in or zoomed out, plant milk or animal milk, melted or frozen, blue or red, natural or artificial, Goldman or Silverman, house or techno, likin’ pictures but not returnin’ texts, individual or collective, letting go or holding on for dear life.
Hand blown (up) glass full face masks trickle down from the ceiling like Busta Rhymes’ bodiless amphoric spirit coiling around a coiling fountain where babes bath and volcanos cast their embers. An outstretched leviathan of a coal mining tale is unearthed among the corn, getting life and steel breathed back into it. Fruit is pressed flat, with veins mapping a landscape of love and loss, akin to human flesh. Stony monuments flattened, scanned and captured amongst manicured front lawns and forgotten folklore. Sheets of toxic material melts into columns of fungus, ruins are renewed and the natural fights back to a techno heartbeat of the forest. Have you ever thought about how a puppet is a rounded version of an idea? One that talks and wears many hats? A flattened glacial crack contains infinite depth like gazing into the interior of a crystal ball, or the glass of a forever broken screen. The spoken word, puffed up and made orbicular through multiple voices reading and translating the illuminated flat page.
We find ourselves in front of noble materials, ideas, and forms, not versus one another, but in collaboration, alive and well, existing in physical form at De Dood (The Death). The more we see in front of us here, the more we know, and we don’t have to find an answer to the question of if we want a pizza or a burger in our current flattened worldlessness.
1. Goldman v Silverman. Safdie, Benny & Josh, directors. Elara Pictures, 2020.
2. “Be Careful.” Track #5, Invasion of Privacy. Atlantic, 2018. Performed by Cardi B.
3. Rhymes, Busta with Williams, Hype, directors. “What’s It Gonna Be.” E.L.E. (Extinction Level Event): The Final World Front. Elektra, 1999.
4. Aldous Huxley
5. Hannah Arendt discussion on ‘worldlessness,’ whereby the sense of shared reality begins to disintegrate when we withdraw from political engagement that we feel is futile. In worldlessness, we isolate ourselves in our own (digital) bubbles where we are only interacting with those that are like-minded, and choices are not necessary.