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A
swamp has a problematic consistency – it does not hold up well. Its
sloppy nature is difficult to categorize. Mucus is also an
indeterminate thing, a deviant substance. The physical state of slime
is neither solid nor liquid, just as swamps are neither water nor soil,
but a potentially dangerous combination of both. Slime has been
associated with excrement and has often been attributed as the form in
which the devil exists. In Dante’s ‘The Divine Comedy’ from the 14th
century, the river Styx is referred to as a swamp in the fifth circle of
the underworld (not the tenth as the mayor of New York claimed in the
film ‘Ghostbusters II’ from 1989, to explain where the massive river of
ghost slime came from). In ‘The Divine Comedy’, the damned souls get
caught up in Styx’s sludge, where the angered ones fight each other in
thick fog while those who carry resentment sink to the murky bottom,
forever mumbling their bitterness. From this, air bubbles rise to the
surface.
Rot can turn solid material into viscous goo.
On
landfills in India and Japan strains of bacteria have evolved and
started decomposing plastic waste into an unrecognizable yet organic
mess.
Slime is also life. In an inconspicuous ditch by a busy
road, the water is filled with tadpoles and other living creatures.
(One night, the water surface of the ditch may be completely still,
reflecting a star that is 40 million kilometers away). Several thousand
mosquitoes are born in a pond somewhere every night, and at the bottom
of that pond perhaps lies a dead moose that went through the ice the
previous winter. Its decaying body rests next to a 1988 plastic ketchup
bottle.
A snail crawling over a concrete foundation leaves traces in the form of a sticky writing no one can decipher.
In
the exhibition at Konsthallen Trollhättan, Julia Selin and Matti Sumari
approach the outside world by looking at it with the logic of a rot or
slime, the resolution of everything or perhaps through the eyes of a
flying moth that lives its life between two tree trunks for a short
time.
Julia Selin works with painting in large formats. Her
works can be described as “night paintings”: pieces that immerse
themselves in a nocturnal state of mind and that lead into a physical,
sensitive and emotional world. She utilizes bodily memories, how it
feels to walk over a bog or through a dark forest or how the rain falls
on her face. She paints using brushes, scrapers, rags and with her
hands. Traces of the painting act are clear in the end result. The
direction of the color paste is controlled by the format of the canvas,
a certain slope at the root of a tree surfaces as a motif.
Matti
Sumari works sculpturally with refining found material as the main
modus. His artworks are crafted from residual products dumped in the
city. He utilizes the urban slag that appears in his environment:
plywood, satellite dishes, plastic, discarded replicas of designer
furniture. Everything is transformed. Shapes in his sculptures are
taken from and informed by microscope images of the newly discovered
species of bacteria and fungi that feed on and break down plastic.
At Konsthallen Trollhättan, the artists meet for the first time in a larger joint exhibition where their two worlds are merged.
Julia
Selin was born in 1986 in Trollhättan, lives and works in Malmö. She
is educated at Umeå Academy of the Arts and the Nordic Academy of the
Arts, Kokkola, Finland. In recent years she has exhibited at Galleri
Wallner, Simris, Galleri Cora Hillebrand, Gothenburg and Galleri Flach,
Stockholm, Wanås Art, Knislinge and participated in group exhibitions at
Malmö Konsthall, V Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, and
Ta-da space, Copenhagen.
Matti Sumari was born in 1987 in
Helsinki, lives and works in Malmö. He is educated at Umeå Academy of
the Arts and the Nordic School of Art, Kokkola, Finland. In recent
years he has exhibited at Sjöbo konsthall, KH7artspace, Aarhus and ACUD
gallery, Berlin and participated in group exhibitions at Kunsthall Oslo,
Künstlerhaus Bregenz, Austria, Vermilion Sands, Copenhagen, Fitzrovia
gallery, London, and Moderna Museet, Stockholm
Photo by: Fredrik Åkum
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