spelling slipping ellipsis

Ester Fleckner, Frédéric Gies, Sixten Hatfield, Linda Lamignan, Fathia Mohidin, Burcu Sahin, Erik Thörnqvist, Paola Torres Núñez del Prado

During April and May, Frédéric Gies will perform Likes-dealer, a site-specific dance created for the exhibition spelling slipping ellipsis.

Performance by Frédéric Gies

spelling slipping ellipsis presents a group of artists who translate histories, bodies, and desires into form, sound and movement. Abstraction is central to the exhibition, both as an artistic language and as a response to the entanglement between identity, representation and figuration. The artists engage with abstraction in order to transcend boundaries, blur contours and outline concrete forms from complex narratives.

The exhibition defies the notion of the body as a stable matter, as well as the idea of a fixed identity, by instead approaching embodiment as a process. When the works allude to the body they do so in fragments, spectrally, unfolding it as a vast shifting archive charged with unfathomable forces and memories. Sexual desire, extractivism, transcendence and the relationship between body and architecture are some of the recurrent themes in the exhibition. When addressing these topics, the artists evoke different locations and timelines.

Guided tour with the curators: Albin Hillervik och Jari Malta

Ester Fleckner (born in 1983, based on the island of Møn in Denmark) shows a series of woodcut prints, a queer take on abstraction where human anatomy is disassembled. Frédéric Gies (born in 1973, based in Malmö) explores the transcending power of techno music through a video installation and a new site-specific performance. Sixten Hatfield (born in 1978, based in Malmö) shares a series of drawings, paintings and texts that are part of their research on abstraction, art history and drag. Linda Lamignan (born in 1988, based in Copenhagen) shows a composition of hanging sculptures and a site-specific painting installation made with petroleum wax, unfolding the personal and political implications of the oil industry. Fathia Mohidin (born in 1985, based in Stockholm) presents two installations that blend sound, sculpture, industrial materials and video, dissecting the gym as a space where discipline and desire are negotiated. Burcu Sahin (born in 1993, based in Oslo) shares a new poem, as a text in the catalogue and as a sound piece, revolving around memory translation. Erik Thörnqvist (born in 1994, based in Stockholm) dwells on the remnants of modernism and the exploitation of Sweden’s northern provinces with a group of steel sculptures. Paola Torres Núñez del Prado (born in 1979, based in Stockholm) shows a series of electronic embroideries and mixed-media paintings addressing the colonial violence forced on nature and indigenous communities.

Several of the artists are based in the Malmö-Copenhagen area, which may also comprise Lund, and all are well acquainted with the local context. This can also be said of the exhibition’s curators, Albin Hillervik (curator and director of Skånes konstförening) and Jari Malta (curator and writer), who are both based in Malmö.

Curators: Albin Hillervik and Jari Malta

Image: Paola Torres Núñez del Prado, WAVe/PaRTICLE (detail), 2022.

Photo: Olof Nimar