Self Portrait, Squeezed

As exhibited at Gallery Kant, Copenhagen, DK, 2018.

Materials: White concrete, heating element, reinforced steel.

Dimensions: Un-squeezed: 125x64x16 cm. Squeezed: 114x64x48 cm.

A concrete geometric shape has had its spatial lines and angles squeezed into a divergent direction. One end has experienced a force that challenges our initial associations with the material. We only need the visual of concrete before we can almost feel its rigidity and coldness on our skin. It has constructional and harsh connotations, but this work challenges our inherent psychological and physical memory and recognition of the material. As the linear shape has experienced a force that has deformed the geometry, the material seems both organic, moldable and maybe even warm? The shape moves within a singular dimension between the rigidity of architecture and the softness and abstraction of something living. The art work is a thermal mirror and representational cast of the artists body. The surface area of the shape equals the surface area of his skin and an electric copper wire inside the shape is heating up the concrete to a temperature that equals the warmth of his skin. As a body it is a sense organ where joints and muscles are pressured into bending and following a movement. It is as if a spinal cord is starting to curl inwards around itself. The abstraction provokes the constructional geometry of the material and it becomes bodily and therefore sensuous; it portrays the visual and sensuous circulation of someone living.