Expectation

Since most of you who are reading this and most of you who will see this piece of shit show also make unnecessary and useless art I might as well get right to it. At the time of writing this text I have no idea what this show will consist of or be about, but rest assure it will be an extraordinary aesthetic experience delivered by exceptional objects. Or not. Who cares? Probably not actually. I just found out that I am doing this show and it has to be ready in one week. Not only that, but the text has to be ready tonight. And it’s not like I have a studio filled with brilliant artworks just waiting to be exposed. In any case, your expectations are most likely unproportionately low or unproportionately high.

Modus Operandi

What is it about? Take your pick. It’s either about some psychological oddity that I read about in Cabinet magazine or some historical-political-unresolvedness-whatever, it could even be about the commodification of immateriality, like credibility or religion. I could go for any one of those and be super happy with myself. I might even go so far as to say that it’s about the fucking art scene, pretend to be all bitter and all knowing, citing bought critics and art world philosophers who shrewdly point out that the anti-market art rhetoric only obliges to soften the image of the market it slavishly serves. All the while I will secretly be hoping that this position of quasi badass-ness lands me some commercial success. Which it probably would have if I hadn’t ended with – “Which it probably would have if I hadn’t ended with”.

“Lars is a parasite that doesn’t actually do anything himself but gets noticed because he never leaves the party…”

from “Lars Cuzner’s Conversational Ghosts” by Kjetil Røed, 2014

Whatever Kjetil! The whole premise for this critique is based on something I supposedly said at some early morning after party. And saying that I don’t do anything myself is low – what do critics do if not exactly nothing themselves? Granted, bringing this up in a text for an exhibition might seem misplaced, but so is publishing personal attacks that rather than addressing the work simply critiques the lack thereof (and it’s not the first time he does this to me either). Just focus on the work, ok?

Fake Fight

Sure, I didn’t paint the painting; it’s by Leonard Rickhard and belongs to the Department of Cultural Affairs, as does the furniture. But I still had to do things myself to get it over here. Among other things, the wall colour had to match and it all had to be transported. Well, actually, I got lucky with the wall colour, they still had a bucket of the same paint at their office, and to be fair, Cultural Affairs did cover the whole transportation bit themselves, but that’s only because the work is very valuable and has to be transported with official Fine Art movers.