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Loup Sarion at Berthold Pott

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

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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

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