Artist: Loup Sarion
Exhibition title: everybody is somebody´s secret
Venue: Berthold Pott, Cologne, Germany
Date: April 18 – May 29, 2018
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Berthold Pott, Cologne
Thanks for checking in.
shoes off
hats off
shoes on
tongue off
shoes off
hats on
hats off
tongue out
Yellow greasy coating, red tongue: DAMP HEAT: skin problems, urinary infections, clammy skin
White coating, teeth marks, pale with red spots: QI DIFICIENCY: fatigue, poor appetite, spontaneous sweating, shortness of breath, over-thinking and worrying
White greasy coating, swollen: DAMP RETENTION: bloated, fullness in chest and abdomen, feel heavy and lethargic
Purple tongue with black spots: BLOOD STASIS: painful legs, liver spots, cold limbs
Red tongue, thin yellow coating: HEAT: feel hot, sweat easily, thirsty, constipated, irritable and bad tempered, skin problems
Red tip, thin white coating: QI STAGNATION AND HEAT IN THE HEART: stressed, unstable emotional state
Pale tongue: QI AND BLOOD DIFICIENCY: dizziness, fatigue, poor concentration and memory, insomnia
Red tongue, cracks, little to no coating: YIN DEFICIENCY: hot flushes, sweat at night, insomnia, irritable, ringing in the ears
In Loup Sarion’s hat constructions, rough-ish and coated with patches of canvas or linen, the anatomy: brim, bill, vamp, crown, trim, under peak, taping, closure, top button, eyelet, crown stitch, front/side/back panels, row stitches, and sandwich, are under wraps, smoothed over, and embedded, so that its exteriorities are ostensibly hidden. These monstrous cover-ups sweat under its layers. Hats are voluntary amplifiers. They shield, they counter. Shielding from others and countering reception of the self from others – an oppositional mirror. A hat is a fix, so to not blow away our covers. Hats steady us as long as we steady them. This relationship is co-productive and co-dependent.
In Loup Sarion’s rolled tongue (diagnosis – Body color: pale. Body shape: very swollen. Tongue coating: smooth surface, part shiny with a bruise), it is us who are being examined as we are made aware of our own being at the edge of extremities, where the walls too are made alive. The room is a body, multiple and flattened. It’s a body with spirits locked in, looking back out. Like the mind imagining oneself walking on ceiling if the world is flipped, trapped between a hat’s tongue and a tongue’s hat.
I cannot sleep these days.
I dream of wearing hats.
I wear hats to dream.
Too much heat. I blame the hat.
-Jo-ey Tang
