Höljet : som stramt binder och omsorgsfullt sveperförslag till ett konstnärligt tänkande kring omsorg, våld och erotik med kristen ikonografi

Sammanfattning

This essay suggests a method of artistic thinking on encagement with Christian iconography as a lense. Encagement is a trinity of care, violence and eroticism. With four of my paintings as the starting point, ‘Marked with Solitude’, ‘Det andra rummet’, ‘Daybreak’ and ‘Velsignelsen’, I’m going to look into recurring motifs and their interior. It takes off in Roland Barthes’ essay, ‘The Struggle With the Angel’ and ends in the conflict between the artist and the Physical World. ‘The sickness of uncompleted narrative’, the title of my bachelor’s exhibition, describes Barthes’ troubles with translation and his difficult-to-interpret models describing the temporality of the myth about Jacob and the Angel. It also describes the Freudian view on perversion as a phenomenon of time, its sickness relying on the perverse subject’s non- linear development. I’m going to read Barthes whilst reflecting on a misunderstanding that took place during a studio visit, and I’ll establish the abject body as a character. ‘The wound (penetration)’ views the abject as a pathway into the body through the artwork. I’ll look at the penetration of the wound in Caravaggio’s painting, The Incredulity of St Thomas, and in my own painting, ‘Det andra rummet’, asking: Why? That’ll lead me to establish radical empathy drawing on Bataille’s ‘Eroticism’ and an analysis of Johannes Lilleøre’s novel ‘Kannibalen’. By the end of the chapter, I’ll ask whether it’s all just a matter of longing away from loneliness. ‘Transgressions (the Holy)’ starts with an analysis of the portrayed moment in my painting ‘Daybreak’, which places the motif in eternity. Afterwards I’ll continue to disease as a motif. I’ll reflect on the relationship between the diseased and the caregiver in my painting ‘Velsignelsen’ as well as the relationship between the abject and the sacred. I’ll conclude that a blessing is also a sentence. ‘The Other World’ reflects on the time and place of art which is different from the rigid presence, referring back to the sickness of uncompleted narrative. Here, identification with the nauseating is allowed, and moral dichotomies can be dissolved. I’ll discuss catharsis and assimilation and manifest my art as sticky rather than cleansing.