Artists: Elodie Pong and Sophie Jung
Exhibition title: you you can can not not have have both
Venue: la rada, Locarno, Switzerland
Date: September 29 – October 21, 2017
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and la rada
Note: Exhibition floor plan can be found here
La rada is delighted to present an exhibition that explores two of Switzerland’s most important contemporary artists: Elodie Pong and Sophie Jung.
The title of the exhibition – you you can can not not have have both – an excerpt from one of Sophie Jung’s texts in the show, alludes to an uncomfortable doubling, one that consents while speaking against it. Even though the work of both artists may appear at first to be very different, there is a complicity that connects their awkwardly shared points, connections that pass by the enigmatic charm of their work. Perhaps the task is now to trade stories, to make comradely alliances strangely collaborative. “It’s a time naming [and looking at] things in another way, because the thing that needs to be named is a certain strange quality of time.“ (Donna Haraway)
For Sophie Jung, performance is a critical part of her work. She sings, acts, (or does she?), she writes. The objects that she creates evoke steps and tones of an intense relationship which sometimes lead to an improvised performance piece and more often yet lead to a text. She will be reading during the opening at 7.30 pm.
For the last couple of years, Elodie Pong has been interested in Smell as a metaphor for the liquidity of our times. At la rada, she will present new works: a video that narrates an abstract history and two installations, as well as Scent Prints, 3D printed sculptures of ideas of synthetic smells. In order to only temporarily freeze thoughts, these sculptures were produced in polylactide—a biodegradable plastic derived from renewable resources—and they will consequently someday return to where they came from. Each object is lit from different sources and presented in shadow forms of varying size and shape.
In a time of environmental issues, when political and social lines start to oscillate, the works of both artists will read in a parallel perpetual continuum of the rooms, lead by a pool of black volcanic sand, which has odors relatable to an imaginary scene of the theater of the absurd, as do the shadows of the speculative sculptures.
Other common points are found in the playfulness of creative solutions chosen by the artists and in the imaginative use of materials and objects. A double empirically affective offering, that can be visited in Locarno until the 21st of October.
This exhibition is part of As a friend, as a trend, as a known enemy, featuring four exhibitions on emerging Swiss art, supported by Pro Helvetia and curated by Riccardo Lisi.
