Installation view of Deluge. Photo: Malle Madsen. Courtesy Lagune Ouest & the artist.

Press release, January 2022

As soon as the idea of the Deluge had finished, no rainbow shone in the gray sky, no hare moved in the meadow, and the clover and swaying flowerbells did not grow back.

Only wind and smoke swapping through unending fields of long grass resembling cotton: millions of spider webs where all the creatures and moments of the world are trapped: like infinite bright screens showing Life.
Eating, shitting, fucking, dying.

The white human, the red human, the black human, the yellow human, the magenta human each carrying bigger or smaller flags.
Devouring each other.
Did cannibals not only live in the Caribbean?
Or is this a labyrinth?
with no center and no circumference.

The animals stare as if they want to say something...
Is it the destiny of frogs to pursue frog-ness?
Is it the destiny of humans to pursue human-ness?

Maybe there is no such thing as humanness,
only human-less, and it is time to pray back to the great Tree.
Or to God.
Or to the Gods.
What about the Great Goddess?
Forget about old hymns and prayers; no stepping back.

A dead poet spoke about being lost in a forest of Symbols,
yet we still wonder: How does the water enter the coconut?

Now is too late to curse the Idol of the yellow eyes and the stupid smile, or to blame the Witch who lights her embers in the earthenware pot; for veiling us to see that under the skin and under the sky all Humans are equal.

– David Cendales.

Installation view of Deluge. Photo: Malle Madsen.
Courtesy Lagune Ouest & the artist.

Installation view of Deluge. Photo: Malle Madsen.
Courtesy Lagune Ouest & the artist.

Installation view of Deluge. Photo: Malle Madsen. Courtesy Lagune Ouest & the artist.

Moa Alskog, Ma solitude me tue, j’avoue que je continue de croir, 2021. Oil on dibond, 150 x 110 cm. Photo: Malle Madsen. Courtesy Lagune Ouest & the artist.

Moa Alskog, Ma solitude me tue, j’avoue que je continue de croir (detail), 2021. Oil on dibond, 150 x 110 cm. Photo: Malle Madsen. Courtesy Lagune Ouest & the artist.

Moa Alskog’s art practice unfolds around the human relation to nature. More specifically to the relationship of human culture to nature and how we can be regarded as symbolic animals that create and comprehend the world through symbolic forms. In paintings and drawings Alskog investigates and maps the cultural history of animals that are particularly sensitive to environmental changes, like the octopus and the frog. The way they are depicted and the abilities we have culturally ascribed to them at different times throughout history reveal something about our relationship with nature.

Moa Alskog, MOA, 2021. Oil on dibond, 150 x 110 cm. Photo: Malle Madsen. Courtesy Lagune Ouest & the artist.

Moa Alskog, My loneliness is killing me, I must confess I still believe (detail), 2021. Oil on dibond, 150 x 110 cm. Photo: Malle Madsen. Courtesy Lagune Ouest & the artist.

Moa Alskog, My loneliness is killing me, I must confess I still believe, 2021. Oil on dibond, 150 x 110 cm. Photo: Malle Madsen. Courtesy Lagune Ouest & the artist.

The Frog in particular as a motif across Western (art) history has within the recent years been of special interest to Alskog. Its many connotations and meanings from fertility goddess in ancient Egypt to becoming the devil’s henchman, and a symbol of female promiscuity in the Middle Ages as well as (in the shape of Pepe the frog) a current political symbol makes the frog a mirror that reveals our understanding of nature and not at least our connectedness with it. The ever-present water in Alskog’s works emphasises this both literally and as a symbolic connectedness between living beings; as the main component of animals bodies (humans included) as well as the matter between us that connects us.

Moa Alskog (SE, 1985) holds a MFA from The Danish Art Academy of Fine Arts (2016). Alskog has recently been showing works at Havebiennalen (Copenhagen), AGA (Copenhagen), Lagune Ouest (Copenhagen), Delfi (Malmö), and Grafikernes Hus (Copenhagen). Alskog is currently showing works in the exhibition Deluge at Lagune Ouest (Copenhagen).

Installation view of Deluge. Photo: Malle Madsen. Courtesy Lagune Ouest & the artist.

Javier Tapia, Untitled (From the series Symbiotic Circles), 2020-2021. Collage on canvas, 200 x 100 cm.
Photo: Malle Madsen. Courtesy Lagune Ouest & the artist.

Javier Tapia, Untitled (From the series Symbiotic Circles) (detail), 2020-2021. Collage on canvas, 200 x 100 cm.
Photo: Malle Madsen. Courtesy Lagune Ouest & the artist.

Javier Tapia works with accumulation and juxtaposition of images and objects of various kind and from various sources. Often the images or objects are found in the storages of art and cultural institutions, left-over prints from educational material, outdated publications, photos of ethnographica, scrap construction material, magazines, at markets or even stuff collected from the bin. His art is always being produced in relation to- against- or on top of something existing and has reference points to how societies produce content, (art) history and share or hide cultural heritage. Questioning traditional scientific western methods of categorising, hierarchising, and periodising Tapia is consciously using his non-western gaze to reimagine, recreate, renegotiate and rethink predominant so-called objective knowledge and narratives surrounding exhibitions of art and culture.

Javier Tapia, Untitled (From the series Symbiotic Circles) (detail), 2021. Collage on canvas, 230 x 127 cm.
Photo: Malle Madsen. Courtesy Lagune Ouest & the artist.

Javier Tapia, Untitled (From the series Symbiotic Circles), 2021.
Collage on canvas, 230 x 127 cm.
Photo: Malle Madsen. Courtesy Lagune Ouest & the artist.

Tapia works in various media such as installation, sculpture, film, and collage. Accumulation and juxtaposition seems to be the two artifice that bridges the different expressions. And not at least his believe in the beholder’s own ability to look, experience, think and sense without being directed or forced in a specific direction serving a specific agenda.

Javier Tapia (CHL, 1976) holds a MFA from The Danish Art Academy of Fine Arts (2010). Tapia has recently been showing works at Vincent Price Art Museum (Los Angeles), Du.al (Svendborg), CAT Cologne (Cologne), Huset for Kunst & Design (Holstebro), Tranen (Gentofte), and Danish Architecture Centre (Copenhagen). Tapia is currently showing works in the exhibition Deluge at Lagune Ouest (Copenhagen).

Text by Lagune Ouest.

Javier Tapia, Untitled (From the series Symbiotic Circles), 2020-2021. Collage on canvas, 200 x 200 cm.
Photo: Malle Madsen. Courtesy Lagune Ouest & the artist.

Javier Tapia, Untitled (From the series Symbiotic Circles) (detail), 2020-2021. Collage on canvas, 200 x 200 cm.
Photo: Malle Madsen. Courtesy Lagune Ouest & the artist.

Opening: January 21st 2022, 4pm-7pm.
Exhibition period: January 21 - February 12, 2022. *Only a limited number of people will be let in at a time and all current COVID-19 rules and restrictions will be followed.