HEART – Herning Museum of Contemporary Art Is Pleased to Announce Dan Colen's First Solo Exhibition in Denmark: Psychic Slayer
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HEART – Herning Museum of Contemporary Art is pleased to announce Dan Colen's first solo exhibition in Denmark: Psychic Slayer. “Death works with us in the world; it is a power that humanizes nature, that raises existence to being, and it is within each one of us as our most human quality…. As long as I live, I am a mortal man, but when I die, by ceasing to be man I also cease to be mortal, I am no longer capable of dying, and my impending death horrifies me because I see it as it is: no longer death, but the impossibility of dying.” ― Maurice Blanchot, Literature and the Right to Death At the core of this exhibition is an idea of a space that barely exists and is even harder to grasp and engage with: the space that bridges life and death. A bridge between two states of being – partly existential and reflective due to the promise of an impending demise, but also magical in the sense that this is a space where virtually anything is possible, making promises of being the moment of ultimate potentiality according to Martin Heidegger. In this regard the exhibition becomes a walk through what is normally regarded as an impossible space, where the architecture and remnants of a life’s choices lay displayed before the audience, beckoning interpretation, new choices, new directions. It is a space that fluctuates between different states of material and projected representations. Psychic Slayer begins with a hat that flies through an airy, light and almost empty room, caught on a gust of wind, its owner nowhere to be seen. The hat dances through the air aimlessly – its previous purpose and functionality has been abandoned in favour of an erratic journey into the unknown. At least that is how the hat appears at first, though a closer inspection reveals the delicate mechanics that permits it flight, allowing for a dual vision of the piece as both real and illusory. The muffled voices telling fortunes in Psychics add to this interplay between divine and manufactured destiny. These fortunes told to an unknown recipient belie their authenticity by making self-contradictory claims and devolving into rote platitudes. Likewise, the small trinkets scattered throughout the exhibition space trace an erratic route made by a mysterious other. This strange path is rendered all the more curious – and perhaps untrustworthy – by the fact that some of the objects appear in duplicate. Most of the artworks contain imprints of another human being – the hat is stretched and marked by its original owner, the fortunes told by mystics are directed at a specific yet anonymous person. All of these pieces continue their own existence after being separated from their owner, while still transmitting their somewhat stifled messages to the audience, as if coming through a radio with a wavering signal. They are the marks that are left, the remaining traces of a previous presence. A salvaged wooden bridge hovers across the passage from the brightly lit, cavernous first gallery into a second, dark space compressed beneath a much lower ceiling. This floating, rickety structure is followed soon after by a huge rock placed directly on the exhibition floor. Amplifying the heaviness of the darkness clouding this section of the exhibition, the rock, Slayer, stands out as if self-illuminated. Its marked surface seems to spell out its title, but rather than being cleanly carved, the topography of the letters gives the impression that the word manifest itself upon being unearthed after a long period of subterranean dormancy. A similarly blurred topography makes its claim throughout the exhibition, giving the impression of a three-dimensional landscape imperfectly translated into a two-dimensional map, enlightening and reducing at the same time. The illusions may not hold up, but their failure points back toward the plight of ‘between-ness’ that holds us captive: between control and surrender; between reality and fantasy; between the physical and the metaphysical. Dan Colen was born in New Jersey in 1979. Exhibitions include the 2006 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2006); “USA Today,” Royal Academy, London (2006); “Defamation of Character,” PS1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, New York (2006); “Fantastic Politics,” National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo (2006); “Skin Fruit: Selections from the Dakis Joannou Collection,” New Museum, New York (2010); “Peanuts,” Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo (2011); “In Living Color,” FLAG Art Foundation, New York (2012); “Meanwhile...Suddenly and then,” 12th Biennale de Lyon (2013); “Dan Colen: The Illusion of Life,” Inverleith House, Edinburgh (2013) and “Dan Colen: Help Will Come” The Brant Foundation (2013) .