KillMe
In the newly-opened gallery, ME contemporary, Ny Adelgade 7, Marco Evaristti opens his first gallery exhibition in Copenhagen in several years.
The artist has chosen the title Killme for a Christmas exhibition without sweets and coziness. Instead, Marco Evaristti explores our inner world of demons which he displays with satire and grotesque dislocation.
Killme is spread over the gallery's two storeys. On the upper level there is a continuation of the thematization of the death penalty that the artist used last year in his huge performance project at the Royal Danish Playhouse, The Last Fashion, a fashion show with clothes designed for prisoners on death row.
Two of these creations can be found on the dolls of Barbie-style; their middle-class accessories, villa and sports car are replaced here with gallows, an electric chair and an execution bench. The face of the artist appears on the male doll and both doll have voices inserted inside. Everything is cloaked in pink Barbie colours and packed in matching boxes.
From the horrifyingly controlled death penalty above, the lower level explores bestial murder and other mutilations. With a lightness that contrasts with the onerous subject, the artist sketches one gruesome manslaughter after another. Cut off limbs and cruel deeds are depicted in drawings, paintings that resemble watercolours and in studded bronze sculptures. Just as Evaristti has previously mixed references to reality in his art, the watercolour character of the paintings is the result of the toxic drug used in lethal injections being mixed with the watercolours.
According to the artist, satire is a powerful means of expressing seriousness and subjects of an existential character: “Satire is susceptible. It creeps inside people through a smile. I have always admired how the Brazilian artist, Antonia Dias, consistently used satire in his drawings in the 1960s and, through satire, described the violent political upheavals of his time. I use satire to show the thoughts of our inner demons. Why are we drawn to horror films and detective mysteries? Because we have anger, revenge and animal instincts lying under the civilized surface. And when we punish we do so out of these instincts, but we wrap them inside a Teflon layer that makes it nice and anonymous.”
[FACTS]
Thursday 10 December 2009, ME contemporary opens at Ny Adelgade in central Copenhagen. Behind the initials is Malou Erritzøe, art historian with a bachelor degree in law. Malou Erritzøe has several years of experience as an art agent and manager for the artist Marco Evaristti.
The objective of ME contemporary is to exhibit art that shows the familiar in a new and different, thought-provoking angle, art that challenges and demands that the observer makes an effort, perhaps takes a stand. The gallery will provide a space for visual narratives with exhibitions that will at times raise questions about the way art is exhibited and expressed.
The gallery will have six exhibitions per year with Danish and International artists.
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Marco Evaristti, born in 1963 in Chile
Danish-Chilean artist, Marco Evaristti, whose work Helena, showing ten functioning blenders, each with a living goldfish inside, exhibited at Kunstmuseet Trapholt in 2000, is known for creating art that can arouse emotions and give rise to a public debate. Among his more recent major projects is Pink State, a state established by the artist, a state of mind, with passports and a constitution, but without controlled or controlling boarders. Pink State materializes transiently at various occasions, such as in Greenland in 2004 with The Ice Cube Project and in 2007 on top of Mont Blanc, The Mont Rouge Project, and most recently in the Sahara Desert with The Arido Rosso Project. Characteristic for all of the projects and Pink State as a concept are themes such as territorialism, community and humanity. Five to twelve is among his latest and on-going projects in which he works with the subject of the death penalty.
For further information, please contact:
Malou Erritzøe
ME contemporary
21 48 30 26