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.