Arbeit (series), 2025Endogenous salts, fats and acids on raw aluminiumIn Arbeit raw aluminium plates are etched through a biochemical corrosive reaction between the surface and bodily fluids. Chemically concentrated sweat – collected by the artist from himself, his partner, and their son – is applied to the aluminium with textiles. The resulting organic shapes resist conscious composition becoming instead records of contact and physical intimacy.
'Marietta cycling to kindergarden, me in fever dreams, my son Gadso developing his brain in his sleep. All reality, all sweat is incorporated in these endo-chemical self/family portraits'
(…) the reaction of sweat on aluminium produces a surprising abstract image that records the chemical process and the passage of time. The impersonality of the inanimate, pragmatic plate, in contrast to the warm affection and care in the gesture that collects the sweat of loved ones, confronts disparate and complementary feelings in the same piece: candour and strangeness, warmth and coldness, delicacy and brutality, memory and presence, the artificial and the organic. (…) In a way, as the artist reflects, these works are a little embarrassing because they are more personal than any image could be. Because they are so direct, immediate, unfiltered, raw and human.
The set of works presented (...) questions the body as a porous medium of affections. The objects subtly point to a critique of the hedonistic and consumerist culture that pushes us into lives of isolation and emotional poverty, while we seek excesses that fill some part of our enormous existential voids. (...) they speak of a society obsessed with unrealistic standards of physical perfection, hygiene and fantasy smells. The artificiality of hard, perennial materials clashes with the finitude of the organic body and the truth of its sebaceous secretions. In a way, as the artist reflects, these works are a little embarrassing because they are more personal than any image could be. Because they are so direct, immediate, unfiltered, raw and human.
Daniela Hochmann Labra, 2025
Gedanken zu Arbeit, FK
'Globale Vernetzung, Hypermobilität, Superdigitailisierung, KI und KR. Tut es nicht unglaublich gut, zu sehen, dass wir als Bioreaktoren gemeine Stoffe produzieren, katalysieren, und im Energieumwälzungsprozess ausscheiden, und wie diese Stoffe mit ihrer Umwelt, dem rohen Material, reagieren? Sie ist furchtbar primitiv, die Tatsache, dass wir ätzen, aber es ist ein direktes, unmittelbares, rohes Feedback. Es ist. Einfach, unkonstruiert. Wenn unsere Realität auf neuro-chemische Stofflichkeit reduziert werden kann, aus einem Reiz der als kognitiver Impuls neuronal verarbeitet wird, das gleiche gilt für den ‚höheren‘ Geist von Sprache, Kunst, die Mathematik, deren Prozess zwar verschachtelter und komplexer aufgebaut ist, im wesentlichen aber auf gleiche Mechanik zurückzuführen ist, dann kann Arbeit als Versuch gesehen werden, die ‚Bild-Herstellug‘ auf drastische Weise zu reduzieren und essentialisieren. Das rohe Material als Bildträger trägt all die Realität, die mein Sohn im Schlaf produziert, während er sein Gehirn entwickelt (und dabei schwitzt!). Schweiss ist Produkt unseres Katalysierens. Es entsteht ein Bild, das der Malerei zugeordnet werden kann, dass wiederum aber aber ohne hinzugefügte Symbole, Sprache, Bedeutungsebenen auf direkte, ehrliche, konkrete weise etwas ‚sagt‘. Das Werk kann als das direkte Ergebnis einer Abgrenzung zwischen Innen und Aussen, zwischen Innerer und Äusserer Realität, gelesen werden, auf dessen Spannung all unsere Sicht der Dinge beruht, geistig und durch unsere grösste Limis: Die schweissproduzierende Haut.'Thoughts about Arbeit, FK
'Global networking, hypermobility, super-digitalization, AI and CR. Isn't it incredibly good to see that we, as bioreactors, produce common substances, catalyze them, and excrete them in the energy circulation process, and how these substances react with their environment, the raw material? The fact that we corrode is terribly primitive, but it is direct, immediate, raw feedback. It is. Simple, unconstructed. If our reality can be reduced to neurochemical materiality, from a stimulus that is neuronally processed as a cognitive impulse, the same applies to 'higher‘ concepts as language, art, and mathematics, whose processes are more convoluted and complex, but essentially stem from the same mechanics, then Arbeit can be seen as an attempt to drastically reduce and essentialize the 'production of image'. The raw material, as the image carrier, carries all the reality that my son produces in his sleep while he develops his brain (and he sweats in the process!). Sweat is the product of our catalysis. The result is an image that can be classified as painting, but which, without added symbols, language, or meaning, 'says' something in a direct, honest, and concrete way. The work can be read as the direct result of a demarcation between inside and outside, between inner and outer reality, on whose tension all our view of things is based, mentally and through our greatest limit: the sweat-producing skin.'
