Camilla Steinum at Soy Capitán

Artist: Camilla Steinum

Exhibition title: In Spite of Chores

Venue: Soy Capitán, Berlin, Germany

Date: February 11 – March 8, 2017

Photography: images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Soy Capitán, Berlin

Forms reappear, a harmonic line is reproduced, this is already a kind of knowledge, at least a frequent, recurring recognition: a strong stability can appear again before our eyes, ring like a refrain in our ears; memory presents itself as knowledge, rhythm presents itself as habit – and before long, as law. But this rare trace in the aerial fluid, this unstable, complex mixture, this partially undone knot, trailing a thousand threads, is not subject to repetition, never achieves invariance: too circumstantial to begin beating in time, too fluid, diluted, chaotic. A bedizened, transcendental space, conditional but not general.

The breathable space lies in a thin layer at ground level and remains stable for quite a long period. Can we place another thread. Where would it go? Under, over, beside: what does ‚side‘ mean?

In the time before the arrival of the word, the flesh is brimming over with grace, intrinsically. It sleeps during the long, wordless night and dreams, amidst the fleeting scents of asphodel, that an enormous tree is sprouting from its stomach, the last branch of which is called the word. Bare-breasted and resting near the patriarch, himself heavy with sleep, she, flesh, dreams in silence of an inconceivable child. Flesh dreams of words; language – fruit – takes root in its womb.

The body resembles the table. The organism is studded with small memory pockets, where time hardly flows or stops altogether, unconscious where it can remain frozen forever. *

* with fragments of Michel Serres’, The Five Senses: A Philosophy of Mingled Bodies

Camilla Steinum predominantly works with textiles, ready-made objects and metal frameworks, while focussing on the qualities and characteristics of materials and objects as such. When carefully arranged and manipulated, these materials create a juxtaposition that highlight their ‚material contrasts‘ – dirty to clean, organic to structured, soft to hard. These analogues can also refer to ‘human’ features, such as manners and other traits connected to social conventions. Many of the objects used by Steinum are existing items that form part of our daily routine. These non-descriptive items and ‘voiceless’ things are pulled away from their traditional uses and reimagined into sculptural assemblages.

Steinum (*1986, Oslo) graduated with a BA in Visual art textiles (2009) and holds a MA in Fine Art (2012), both at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. She lives and works in Berlin.