Artists: Nina Beier, Marco Bruzzone, Michael Dean, Oscar Enberg, Lasse Schmidt Hansen, Lena Henke, Chosil Kil, Liz Magor, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Louis Scherfig
Exhibition title: NO EYES DRY
Curated by: Chosil Kil
Venues: One and J. Gallery, Art Sonje Center, Small House and Local Residence, Seoul, South Korea
Date: October 12 – November 11, 2017
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists
Note: Exhibition floor plan can be found here
NO EYES DRY (Fullmoon Woman) by Louis Scherfig
She walked into a bar and sat down somewhere without having ordered anything to drink. Almost immediately she entered a state where her whole sentience was gathered on the very edge of any single piece of nearby sharpness, she underwent various layers of emotion but they were all suppressed by a translucent yet heavy cargo and the effect of this flattening was aligning all layers, as 4 dimensions experienced as 2 etc. Equally not felt was anything ‘bad’, which opened up the possibility of a personal temporary mystery; how is it possible to feel and not feel at the same time… or… how is it possible to feel, so intrinsically and complete, a non-feeling? … I think of this flatness as inexhaustible. The more I feel less, the longer it will last, closing in on the forever ungraspable point of perfect nullity. Is it full moon? What other than a full moon makes me thrive so in these no-vibes pulsing from everything inherent in my soul? What then, makes me outlive these enduring seconds of clear zeroship? And ultimately what makes me wholly fathom this encompassing ambience of the all-out incomprehensible? There must be an artificial grain of reversed quantum data flawing up the logic stream of this sentience, how else can I truly enjoy this withdrawal from traditional pleasure but not towards its exact opposite, but towards its promethean next. Is it full moon? No, it’s not full moon. Is it the music? What is playing?
She turned her head towards the jukebox and stayed quiet. Both our eyes rested patiently on the machine until her far-sight was done calibrating and she could read the title of the song from distance. “It all seems… It all seems so limitless… I can read it perfectly.”
I was having trouble even noticing the jukebox through the dust and smoke floating around the room. Her shoulders started shaking slightly, then more, until she turned around. A terror rarely seen had conquered her face. She stuttered; “the song… s full moon…..”
Things happened without much hesitation. The currency of her tears reached a pivotal point where everyone else in the bar understood the flawed nature of this different world they’d entered through her shadow’s monolingual tongue. Everyone was listening now. She cast a spell on the entire room and pronto gravity was not upheld anymore, things slowly lifted off their place and started floating around the room with tranquility. The spatial vacuum swallowed all sound and consequently all we could hear was the intimate crackle of dust falling softly onto the lower slopes of our ear canal. The liquidity of our drinks left the glasses and floated around the room in small, mute clusters that constantly changed according something else than motion and vibration since a vacuum has neither. Nobody understood. And just as some cherry wine merged into a pilsner in slow motion right in front of her, she pulled her single pearl ear ring straight out from the tip of her ear, cutting herself as the lock was pulled through the tiny hole. Blood began to geyser out her ear in small parading bubbles and she took the pearl and dabbed the perfectly red and reflective droplets with the pearl breaking their formation, smudging the pearl in blood. She whispered another spell at at it, repeating the accurate words over and over before pushing the tiny pearl into the middle of the room, her voice gained strength as if the pearl had to be able to hear her chant while it floated away from her. But nothing could be heard in the vacuum.
The pearl started growing, its uneven surface swelling significantly various places as if it was inflated and reacted very differently to the air expanding its thinning material; like a bubble from bubble gum. While gaining size rapidly the pearl also evened its surface reaching a perfect round shape. the electricity in the whole room flickered collectively but so did the swelling pearl as if it sucked all the electricity from the establishment into itself and lit up the room with an anti-sentient glow perfectly matching the descriptions of the full moon woman’s inner concept minutes ago. darker spots emerged on the surface of the pearl, darker spots as if a diluted ink was seeping through producing a visual imbalance to the 100% singular ambience. the woman cheered and screamed and clapped her hands in very high spirit. everyone else was busy accepting the sudden inversion of reality. mouths agape they watched the pearl continue to grow while emitting the glow as they floated around and into each other and into things until the pearl was pressing everything against the walls, squeezing itself into every single part of the room and crunching them all. Full moon, the woman’s lips read as her face disappeared behind the still growing pearl pressed against the yellow wall. It was a moon. A full moon, indeed.
