Life in a house with wooden billows — Dohyang Lee Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: January 28 → February 12, 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.”

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.

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.

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, has created a sculpture based on the late activity of artist Victor Boullet’s Institute of Social Hypocrisy for the show at Doyhang lee; a parisian gallery and work of art in which Collins has recently exhibited. Collins’ work is centered on themes about broken stages; a reflection on the fragility and the strength of art and poetry as a social fabric. Collins uses cork and holes in the sculpture, as symbols of healing and entertainment in which the actors themselves transform into plugs, holes, or soap boxes.

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.