GROUP SHOW "TACIT" 📷

Friday, August 26, 2022 4:00 PM 16:00
Friday, September 23, 2022 5:00 PM 17:00

Sharp Projects, København Blegdamsvej 38 København, 2200 Denmark (map)

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Tacit (Installation view). Sharp Projects, 2022. Photo: Sebastian Vistisen Toft.

Press release, August 2022

Tacit
Tild Greene, Mhm, mhm and Alex Thake
Curated by Cudelice Brazelton IV

Sharp Projects presents Tacit, an investigation of projection and light through sculpture, sound, installation, and video. Considering how themes of world building in contemporary culture escalated in recent years, it may become useful to enact on these speculations and then interact in return. The oscillating work from Tild Greene, Mhm, mhm, and Alex Thake each carry a particular engagement with embedded presence. How to interpret that depends on the body on sight and what fixture is used. Focusing on these distinctions with device and material modifications reveal reflective phenomena. If speculative systems are put into use in relation to everyday experience, one can see the synchronicity. This is mostly apparent in flickering encounters and gestural insistence. Utilizing Sharp Projects as an architectural viewfinder, each position proposes a use of optical perspective. Acknowledging phenomena that also directs to the social and political.

Tild Greene’s sculptural works distribute direction. Attached to the front window of the space is Strong throw (2022) and Steam is like a sound is like a signal (2022), serving as a binded prosthetic appendage to the facade of the gallery. Assembled from a tensioned axe head wedged between a resistance band and a tennis ball thrower, aimed projection is suggested. Dormant pressure stores in Greene’s work awaiting to be utilized. This tension re-works the reference point of utility transforming a sense of agency. Protecting, improving and equipping the body until convergence begins. Coiled seaweed strands fitted with fake eyelashes align to the wooden frame acting as organic lenses. Steps (2021) extends the breaking potential and continues the pace of the projectile. Deconstructed ice skates are attached to a metal bar, pierced and repeated. Greene’s projectiles series travels through the exhibition in favor of blunt sensibilities.

TIld Greene, Steam is like a sound is like a signal, 2022 (Seaweed, fake eyelashes, epoxy resin. Series of 4). Photo: Sebastian Vistisen Toft.

Tild Greene, Strong throw, 2022 (Axe head, resistance band, tennis ball thrower. 65x 85x 22cm). Photo: Sebastian Vistisen Toft.

Mhm, mhm, 11222BP (click), 2022 (Stainless steel balls, 6 disposable Kodak cameras, crystal ball. 190 x 60 cm). Photo: Sebastian Vistisen Toft.

Mhm, mhm, 11222BP (click), 2022 (Stainless steel balls, 6 disposable Kodak cameras, crystal ball. 190 x 60 cm). Collaborators: Sophie friedman pappas, Rodolfo Diaz, Jeff Egner, Johnny Draper, Vijay Masharani. Photo: Sebastian Vistisen Toft.

The thought of instrumentalizing peripheral senses and obscuring location is evident in Mhm, mhm’s practice. The reflection of the steel, depicted lights, and orbs in the images provides another perceptual effect. Sources come from six disposable cameras in different viewpoints of a disco ball in a former roller rink converted into a convenience store. The flashes luminate the previous sociality of the space, relating it to a past populated architecture. 11222BP (click) (2022) is an rearranging installation that uses documentation of a previous performance including invited participants for the action. In Audition (2022), video serves as a mediation for the invisible presence of authority. Extending that notion beyond the tool to examine and experiment, it is put into use for adaptability and reality of shared condition. Non human statures of authority cruise past the frame, mimicking the posture of their users. A composition sampling Billy Idol’s Eyes Without A Face plays in the background, looping and fading with the weight of a subwoofer’s bass in the basement.

Tacit (Installation view). Sharp Projects. Photo: Sebastian Vistisen Toft.

TIld Greene, Steps, 2022 (Ice skates, steel bar, cable ties. 125 x 47 x 17 cm). Photo: Sebastian Vistisen Toft.

Alex Thake, There is a god shaped vacuum in the heart of every man, 2022 (Slot machine with retrofitted CRT-TV, image: Greifswald, August 2022. 30 x 60 x 90 cm). Photo: Sebastian Vistisen Toft.

The light of the basement fluctuates between a glaring white to a smooth darkness. An object leans itself forward, constructed of laser cut plexiglass and chromashift lacquer. Assembled and accessible technologies are present in Alex Thake’s mechanisms. The surreal is amplified in her work through a more haunting fracture in reality and reflection. Skywatch (2022) is an iridescent sculpture referencing the aesthetics of a birdhouse and a surveillance booth. Its tilting surface resembles an infrared device ready to absorb and capture. Interacting with the pipes in the low ceiling basement, the sculpture latches itself with a CCTV mount allowing for swiveling to monitor the scene. As the viewer ascends the stairs one is confronted with a modified slot machine. The CRT-TV is converted to display a video of a sunset shot in Greifswald, Germany, home of romantic landscape painter Casper David Friedrich. There is a god shaped vacuum in the heart of every man (2022) explores the slippage of natural and technological combinations through art historical citation. The unpredictability of The ambiguity of the sunset provokes and utilizes the ability of the screen to heighten aspects of the sublime. Thake’s practice tampers with the conflict of consciousness regardless if the condition is troubled or transcending.

– Text by Cudelice Brazelton IV