Olivia Erlanger at What Pipeline

Artist: Olivia Erlanger

Exhibition title: The Oily Actor

Venue: What Pipeline, Detroit, US

Date: February 19 – March 26, 2016

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and What Pipeline, Detroit

Between licking the inside and peeling back, desire, shipwrecked, oscillates.
Creaking open, splitting seams, the penny always lies.

One time I tried to grab it… Slippery, it flipped! Like a fresh caught fish smacking against a swift stream bed. There the tongue resides in its hollow bunker. Behind in a shallow pool, the lake of mind heaves, placidly, plastically, unbroken by oars.

As I attend to my other work, I turn its face down. Face down, I slowly leave fingermarks all over the soft and viscous interior. Clear as glass, each object that comes in contact becomes a grubby mark.

Satisfied, my surgical sight notices the surface has become arid, cracked, baked, split like a perfect madeira cake. I mask your topography. A new layer cloaks, compresses, what had begun to sag and spill.

Suturing, you start (and start) to appear.

Consider the Sleuth.
Who, as he snoops, steps quickly behind the lamppost becoming a line,
becoming a shadow.

He is the lamppost and the lamppost is the Sleuth.