PSM Gallery @ Dohyang Lee
Life in a house with wooden billows
Øystein Aasan
Thomas Chapman
Mathis Collins
Sophie Erlund
29 Janvier – 12 Février 2011
‘The small room into which the young man was shown was covered with yellow wallpaper: there were geraniums in the windows, which were covered with muslin curtains; the setting sun cast a harsh light over the entire setting. There was nothing special about the room. The furniture, of yellow wood, was all very old. A sofa with a tall back turned down, an oval table opposite the sofa, a dressing table and a mirror set against the pierglass, some chairs along the walls, two or three etchings of no value portraying some German girls with birds in their hands – and that was all.’
(Dostoevski, Crime and Punishment)
Physical and mental states act jointly through the human body. The physical body acts as a house to the human spirit and to the mind. The other way around reflects the architecture of the person who inhabits it. In the exhibition ‘Life in a house with wooden billows’, Øystein Aasan (NO), Thomas Chapman (US), Mathis Collins (F) and Sophie Erlund (SE) explore the interrelation of body, mind and architecture in different ways.
Øystein Aasan, born 1977 in Norway, manipulated glass negatives from the 1920s and 30s. The slides originated as educational material for the students of the University in Oslo; from which the students could learn about architectural history. Aasan worked the slides back into an archival method of storage, into a sort of filing box, which stand up like skyscrapers onto wooden plinths.
Thomas Chapman, born 1975 in California, created the 2010 installation ‘The Warm Whole Chapel’. The installation’s original purpose was to provide shelter to the artist, who worked in a studio without heating. Slowly the structure transformed into an architectural piece, a colorful chapel, in which Chapman archived and transformed source materials, sketches, and plans into building components.
Mathis Collins, born 1986 in Paris, carves wooden heads which he affixes to cork stoppers. Inherited from an Italo-Germanic tradition dating from the early 20th Century, the production of these objects ceased in the 1960′s. In 2010, when Cyril Verde invited Collins to dig an artesian well in the Palais de Tokyo, they had a wooden portrait of themselves made and affixed to a cork. This was the model for a future fountain. Following the exhibition of this piece, Collins started to produce these objects himself. The double-portrait of Damien and Victor is the first work in this series.
Sophie Erlund, born 1978 in Denmark, works from found materials, which return her mind to a mental stage she works about. Erlund researches the liminal phase in her work. Liminality is a psychological, neurological, or metaphysical subjective state, conscious or unconscious, of being on the “threshold” of or between two different existential planes. This phase encompasses a mental stage between anticipation and fear, which Erlund expresses in her work through the use of architectural models.
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Sophie Erlund
Exhibition view : Life in a house with wooden billows, Psm Gallery at Dohyang Lee, Courtesy PSM Gallery,
photo © Aurélien Mole.
Sophie Erlund
Exhibition view : Life in a house with wooden billows, Psm Gallery at Dohyang Lee, Courtesy PSM Gallery,
photo © Aurélien Mole.
Sophie Erlund
Hollow air mirror, 2010, nails, fur, bast, 86 x 65 x 5 cm.
Exhibition view : Life in a house with wooden billows, Psm Gallery at Dohyang Lee, Courtesy PSM Gallery, photo © Aurélien Mole.
Mathis Collins
Corkstopper (portrait of Damien and Victor), 2011, cork, wood, watercolor, copper, 23 cm diamter, 14 cm deep.
Exhibition view : Life in a house with wooden billows, Psm Gallery at Dohyang Lee, Courtesy PSM Gallery, photo © Aurélien Mole.
Øystein Aasan
Exhibition view : Life in a house with wooden billows, Psm Gallery at Dohyang Lee, Courtesy PSM Gallery,
photo © Aurélien Mole.
Øystein Aasan
Exhibition view : Life in a house with wooden billows, Psm Gallery at Dohyang Lee, Courtesy PSM Gallery,
photo © Aurélien Mole.
Thomas Chapman and Nik Nowak
The warm Whole Chapel, 2009-2010, mixed media.
Exhibition view : Life in a house with wooden billows, Psm Gallery at Dohyang Lee, Courtesy PSM Gallery, photo © Aurélien Mole.