Henrik Olai Kaarstein at C-o-m-p-o-s-i-t-e

Artist: Henrik Olai Kaarstein

Exhibition title: New Promises

Venue: c-o-m-p-o-s-i-t-e, Brussels, Belgium

Date: January 20 – March 18, 2017

Photography: Hugard&Vanoverschelde, all images copyright and courtesy of the artist, T293, Rome and c-o-m-p-o-s-i-t-e, Brussels

Promise. A declaration that one will do a particular thing or that guarantees that a particular thing will happen, or not anymore. The quality of potential excellence. Display. Make a prominent exhibition of something in a place where it can easily be seen. Being put on show. Reputation. Beliefs or opinions generally held about someone or something. A widespread belief that someone or something has a particular habit or characteristic. Stranded. Left without resources. Rehabilitation. Restore to former privileges or reputation after a period of critical or official disfavor. Re-made able.

Promise, display, reputation, stranded, rehabilitation. The worlds these words can carry. Leaving aside the varnish of symbolic and projected meaning, why not take things as they have become? In their fuller range. Promise, display, reputation, stranded, rehabilitation. An ever more versatile set of recurring conditions. Applicable to these, they, us and that. One can wonder where it is at now and how these, they, us and that are doing.

Men from published photographic sources have been transposed into Henrik Olai Kaarstein’s new series of paintings. As such they get singled out from their glossy abundance. Having become un/specific singularities, they appeal for attentiveness. Lacquered patches encompass the paintings like broken frames, though as geostrategic liquid corridors they overflow patterned order. No one actually knows whether they are still trying to hold them or whether they are infiltrating. Colourful checkered patchworks surround the figures at the center. Just checkered. Just having a pattern of alternating squares of different colours. Or, just marked by periods of varied fortune or discreditable incidents.

Attached to the reverse side of the paintings are sculptures, mended and made out of things of protection, practicality, love and care. Used to be. Left behind. Companionless. Kaarstein very pleasingly and joyfully rehabilitated them from the scraps of their former social lives. On small ledges, like anthropomorph artefacts they lay down or stand upright, stretched at full length or erect or crooked. From containers to substrates, they bear. (Oh, the worlds these things can carry!) Discreet yet vivid. They’ve been re-made able to belong anew.

Retrieved from Kaarstein’s personal moving image collection, downstairs two videographic snippets loop. Paired up for dancing, they present rough and patterned samples of performed dullness. “Live up to your name!” we dictate, but leave them with only enough world-for not to perform brightness. Yet on the edges and beneath fades of pink and an investment in potential brilliance appear like new promises.

Promise is an easy statement. Whether old ones are met or not, new promises are midpoints, breaking up axes of time and action in any other case. Every other time can be a next first time. An occasion for new promises. Disclosing new forms of being, no hypo/thesis or proposition can be wild enough. From rehabilitation to promise, again. Onward.

Henrik Olai Kaarstein, New Promises, 2017
Installation view, C-o-m-p-o-s-i-t-e, Brussels

Henrik Olai Kaarstein, Consequences Here and Over There, 2016, Lacquer, vinyl paint, acrylic paint, acrylic mediums, soft pastels, oil pastels, charcoal, tissue paper, varnish on canvas, 300 x 220 cm

Henrik Olai Kaarstein, Anne, 2015, Charcoal, glue, lacquer, acrylic paint, acrylic mediums, soft pastels, laser prints, plastic sheet, resin on silver tray, 55 x 35 cm

Henrik Olai Kaarstein, Your face like a Mannequin, 2016, Lacquer, vinyl paint, acrylic paint, acrylic mediums, soft pastels, oil pastels, charcoal, tissue paper, varnish on canvas, 230 x 220 cm

Henrik Olai Kaarstein, Clarice, 2015, Lacquer, silicone, ceramics, glass, tape, glue, artificial flowers, acrylic mediums on aluminium, 35 x 18 x 15 cm

Henrik Olai Kaarstein, This Much Fun, 2017, Lacquer, vinyl paint, acrylic paint, acrylic mediums, soft pastels, oil pastels, charcoal, tissue paper, varnish on canvas, 225 x 150 cm

Henrik Olai Kaarstein, Majora, 2015, Gas mask filter, silk, wood, silicone, steel, lacquer, vinyl paint, acrylic mediums, magazine clipping, 26 x 12 x 15 cm

Henrik Olai Kaarstein, Amnesia Lover’s Convention, 2016, Lacquer, vinyl paint, acrylic paint, acrylic mediums, soft pastels, oil pastels, charcoal, tissue paper, varnish on canvas, 215 x 175 cm

Henrik Olai Kaarstein, Abba, 2015, Broach, lacquer, glue, soft pastels on suitcase, 100 x 40 x 25 cm

Henrik Olai Kaarstein, Never Again Anymore. (Promise), 2017, Lacquer, vinyl paint, acrylic paint, acrylic mediums, soft pastels, oil pastels, charcoal, tissue paper, varnish on canvas, 270 x 205 cm

Henrik Olai Kaarstein, Emin, 2015, Broken Tracey Emin ceramic mug, marble slab, metal hinge, coated glass, artificial flowers, lacquer, vinyl paint, glue, 17 x 12 x 9 cm

Henrik Olai Kaarstein, Seals (I and II), 2014, Video projections, no sound, 00:19 / 00:32, looped