MATIAS FALDBAKKEN: "Nothing Doing"
STANDARD (OSLO)
PRESS RELEASE
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MATIAS FALDBAKKEN
"NOTHING DOING"
04.10.-04.11.2007 / PREVIEW: 04.10.2007 / 19.00-21.00
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NOTHING DOING
Here is The Idle Hour Club. Right here. It is here, and nowhere else, that the possibility of the impossible is preserved. (Sentence cut out). The do’h! of being alive and at the same time against life. Behold negative presence. An old fool once quoted a not so old fool saying: ‘Only life can produce the idea of being against life.’
This is the image. The image is an idiot. The eyes they see. All reflection, all blathering, all meaning, all amusement, all irony, all rhetoric, all construction, all earnest, all the ten points and all annihilation goes to the text. This is significance gone bald.
This is the image that doesn’t try. This is the image created without effort. This is the representation that Reaper sent. (Sentence cut out). This is not the something that happens, after which there comes the image. This is the nothing that happens and which becomes the image. (Sentence cut out). This is a portrait of staying with the negative. All the time.
- Easier said than done, said the donkey.
- In fact easier done than said, said the pig.
This is the gesture. A getting rid of. A blowing out. A shutting down. No backup. It’s a gesture.
This is not thought made visible but nought made visible. This is information exodus. This is aphasia. This is no-response. This is clamming up. This is not caring. This is inhuman. This is the Christmas party of rebuff. This is where I missed the part where that’s my problem. This is what you can’t overlook because there is nothing to be seen. This is wasted. This is no. And no. It’s not. It’s not funny. It’s funny that this is not funny. This is unfun. This is unun. This is Dr No. This is no way. This is what the hell? This is no-go. This is onto nothing. This is nothing doing.
(Sentence cut out). The Eskimos have two hundred ways to say snow. I have three million ways to say no. (Setence cut out). This is a contribution gone wrong. (Sentence cut out). This is refusing a contribution in the making. Here: a rejection for you. This is an offer so weak it must be considered a theft. This is a ‘mhm’ so pathetic that it counts as a no. This is a no in the bathrobe of a yes.
Matias Faldbakken
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Matias Faldbakken (b. 1973) lives and works in Oslo. His works have earlier been included in various biennales and museum exhibitions such as The Sydney Biennial (2004); The 51st Venice Biennial (2005); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Frankfurter Kunstverein; Kunstverein München; ICA, London; PS1 MoMA, New York; CAC, Vilnius; Kunstwerke, Berlin; and Städtisches Museum in Lenbachhaus, München. Throughout the course of the exhibition Faldbakken's works can also be seen in a solo exhibition at Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis. Currently available is also his book, Not Made Visible, published by Christoph Keller Editions / JRP Ringier, Zürich.
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Installation photography: Frode Fjerdingstad
