Domestic Riot, exhibits #1-5
2007
Exhibit #1 (No Reflection)
Oil and lacquer on broken mirror with
frame
106 x
Exhibit #2 (Reclaim Unpredictability)
Acrylics and lacquer on combined lamp
and space-divider, steel-wire
120 x 65 x
Exhibit #3 (Refuse Use)
Oil and lacquer on table with hole and
two legs
65 x 60 x 120
Exhibit #4 (Resist Assimilation)
Oil and lacquer on children’s mattress,
tape, steel-wire
115 x 30 x 30
Exhibit #5 (Protest)
Oil and lacquer on perforated floor lamp
with truncated cord
32 x Ø38 cm
Domestic Riot,
Exhibits #1-5 is a series of works relating to painting as a medium for revolt.
Like the barricades and banners of riots in the streets, these objects have
been altered to become symbols of resistance. Taking (Ikea) furniture as a
point of departure, the works seem to have been through an in-house upheaval,
relating both to the interior-design domain of domestic housing and to the
commoditization of art.
Painting is
normally to be seen within the realms of the interior, be it as a relating
formally to the furnishings or as proof of the owner’s cultural assets it
remains as an element of the interior design. In this series that perspective
is inversed as the interior elements are transformed to painting as a result
from a fictive indoor riot. Painting as medium has a tradition beyond art as a
tool for groups of persons to demonstrate their discontent with authority and
systems of control. Slogans and symbolic colours are painted onto banners,
barricades and facades, as part of a language of the streets, or the exterior,
outside the security of walls. In the series Domestic Riot the rebellion has
moved inside, seemingly as a protest against the commoditization of the human
(and of art). Paint is used to change (Ikea) furniture into barricades of
slogans, with terms we recognise from resistance and upheaval, but also from
within the discourse of art. In both cases language here serves as a meditation
of freedom from the power of definition, a hidden but systematic oppression.