Under månens sken at Lagune Ouest

Artists: Moa Alskog, Ivan Pérard, Laura Guiseppi

Exhibition title: Under månens sken

Venue: Lagune Ouest, Copenhagen, Denmark

Date: July 17 – August 14, 2021

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Lagune Ouest, Copenhagen

I am proud to present the exhibition Under månens sken with works by Moa Alskog, Laura Guiseppi and Ivan Pérard.

Full of art historical references, e.g. a Vincent van Gogh, some dancing figures by Nancy Spero that she probably stole, and not at least a cave painting from Yemen are some of the imagery appearing in Moa Alskog’s diptych.

This last thing, the cave painting makes me speechless and forever intrigued. Sometimes it strikes me that I might just be doing art exhibitions to have an excuse to read about cave paintings and all the new discoveries made in this area of research. My eyes and thoughts are always directed towards some sort of prehistoric imagery and subject matter. I am quite sure that was why I decided to study art history in the first place.

What Alskog does is that she appropriates existing images and redraws them with a simple kid’s pencil. “Good artists copy, great artists steal” Alskog says, referring to Pablo Picasso’s statement later used by Steve Jobs. All of the figures share similarities with a frog or a human squatting; floating or swimming around in a blue substance, could be water, could be the night sky or inside the uterus. Alskog is inspired by the frog’s symbolic metamorphoses. How this creature and its representation across various cultures and times in history changes meaning. From being a symbol of fertility, birth and life in ancient Egypt, to an important ingredient for the alchemist’s search for eternal life, to becoming the devil’s henchman and a symbol of female promiscuity in the Middle Ages and not at least the disneyfied version where the frog always is the enchanted prince. All these meanings are captured in Alskog’s work and in a very simple way it tells to whole history of art in one glance.

The Swedish title of the work Under månens sken meaning Under the moonlight can be read in a very cheesy romantic way but also in a more direct poetic, maybe naive way which I prefer. That is why I also chose Under månens sken to be the title of the entire exhibition. A bit of stealing there too, I guess.

The gray goo theory inspires Ivan Pérard when he is designing and shaping his sculptures on his computer. An end-of-days scenario where molecular nanotechnology makes it theoretically possible for machines to replicate themselves. After a day of replication they weigh a ton – after two days they outweigh planet Earth. For Pérard this idea of uncontrolled reproduction creates a base from where possible figurations of all sorts can materialise. A logic that mirrors itself when the sculptures are being put into print. Like umbilical cords crude steel rods hold up the 3-D printed sculptural half bodies, half machines by Pérard. Organic yet constructed, each of their surfaces are painted and airbrushed with certain gestures, a certain makeup; some kind of marker that reveals the individual body’s identity or connection to a certain group.

Flattened bodies, crooked bodies, and barren bodies; bodies that do not fit into the boundaries of the so-called normal. Laura Guiseppi’s group of sculptures resembles some sort of being, barely alive with features suggesting kinship to an octopus. A flat curved body with arms that might enable the being to move. Is it an eye or an egg that it is carrying? Some are placed on latex mats suggesting a kind of nest where maybe fertilisation or incubation of the egg/eye is possible or simply a place to find rest and peace.

Lagune Ouest takes its name from the neighbouring town to Vermilion Sands, the surreal beach resort in J.G. Ballard’s book of the same name. I am very happy to welcome you to this first exhibition in Lagune Ouest, a new commercial gallery.

Nikolaj Stobbe
Copenhagen, June 2021