ELISABETH MOLIN "___(DIZZY)*~" 📷

Friday, May 13, 2022 5:00 PM 17:00
Sunday, June 12, 2022 5:00 PM 17:00

Galleri Format, Malmö Claesgatan 14 Malmö, Skåne län, 214 26 Sweden (map)

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Elisabeth Molin, ___(dizzy)*~ (Installation view).

Press release, May 2022

The dark ink-like substance ran down my finger. Had it not been for the stark smell, I would have licked it. The opacity of its blackness felt very sensual. And in my mind the oil naturally connected to the material of the leather shoes that held the liquid, bending the fluid into something solid, without hesitation or tension. I definitely hadn’t been surprised had the shoes themselves been an incarnation of the plasticity of oil. It spurred me to think about the intricate feedback loops between our bodies, senses and how we extend into the world and to the objects and technical prostheses around us. You think you are the one operating the broom stick – but maybe it also operates you through its discrete behavioural control. The crows are attracted to the image of themselves, their copy.

The shoes standing on the floor are the material double of a pair of shoes appearing in the dream of a night guard, interviewed by Molin. My encounter with them and the dark liquid inside them along with the image of a glass of milk with oil pouring into it made me think of the different ways of making connections between things, in symbolic, metaphorical or metonymical registers, on a practical or imagined level. What meaning may that dark fluid carry? If the guard were to put his feet into the shoes, it would undoubtedly soak his socks and stain the floor. Is it a metaphor for his hesitance towards walking around in the dark – or simply an image of the fact that he does exactly that?

Elisabeth Molin’s works create room for imagination and speculation in focusing on the connections between what is physically present and what is there in a mediated form, as an image, a copy, a shadow.

Oil and milk, however different, share qualities that may turn them both into metonymies of production and reproduction. Cows are excellent machines, philosopher Vilém Flusser reminds us, as “prototypes of future machines that will be designed by advanced technology and informed by ecology. In effect, we may state that, as of now, cows are the triumph of a technology that points to the future.”(1) The ways in which our existence is entangled with the substance of oil is dizzying.

As a means of transport, of heat, of plastic products and closely connected to lethal politics, oil shows us the way into an apocalyptic present and future, while being a biproduct of past forms of life inhabiting this earth. Being opaque substances without colour, milk and oil pose as each other’s contrast or reflection, when mixed we find ourselves in the grey area of uncertainty.

Molin’s works turn attention to the edges of perception, of what can be sensed and known: the inlets of the filmstrip carrying colour codes, but not disclosing what is on it, images of a burning camera and the reflection of a person, blurring hierarchies between background and foreground. We are here in full daylight, surrounded by things and the representations of things, but just behind that lurks darkness and nothingness. On the brinks of certainty, we may find objects moving that we thought were still, discover the shadow existence of things or cherish the seemingly insignificant movements of a fly cleaning itself.

(1) Vilém Flusser, ‘Cows’, Natural:Mind (1979/2013), Translated from Portuguese by Rodrigo Maltez Novaes, excerpt published on ArtForum, September 2013. www.artforum.com/print/201307/vilem-flusser-geoffrey-winthrop-young-introduction-42641

Ps.
Dear Elisabeth,
It is as if the floor is a little... (when speaking English, I for some reason always can only think of the German word schief, which leaves me hesitating before finishing the sentence) ... uneven or unlevelled. My brain obviously tries to fill out the gap left between speaking my mother tongue and a second language by interchanging words. I am sure that a neuroscientist would be able to explain why it is that certain areas of my brain’s language centres seem to overwrite each other in these situations. The unlevelled floor gives me the rolling feeling of being on a boat or a train, not in a hotel in the middle of London.

I think of you, trying to imagine which areas you would walk around in, which streets you would walk or ride by, what you would notice and what not. I was a bit overwhelmed by all the Eid-celebrating families in the main road and got very self-aware about my position as onlooker and outsider even when simply sharing that time and space.

When the plane took off, my head felt light and heavy at the same time. I noticed that the standstill and the slow movement before take-off felt the same. Transported into the anywhere of traveling, I dozed off leaning against the window and the wall. Dizzying. But also cradled in the safety of privilege: I can return to my routines and the familiarity of my neighbourhood after this trip – others cannot.

Text by Anne Kølbæk Iversen.

Exhibition period: May 13 - June 12, 2022.
Opening hours: Wed & Thu: 2-6 pm, Fri-Sun: 12-4 pm.

Posted in 2022, Sverige, Gallerier, Udstillinger, Udland, Billedserier