Matilda Lövgren

'There are two ways of understanding the negative of form – as an absence of form, or as a negative space. The absence of form could send us in the morass of the formless, of the lack of distinctions and boundaries. Negative space indicates an outline of something or someone missing, of a missing part. The formless calls for merging, melting into, and the danger here is losing oneself. The form of an absence, calls for a melancholic contemplation of something we dearly miss, something or someone that we might want to merge with, or even consume, devour, ingest. Absences call for substitutions, or replacements, which have to do with the bodies that were around us since the dawn of our very early self-experiences.

 

At the heart of sculpture as a medium is the force field of the body, of corporeality, the pulse of merging and separating, to missing, loving, hugging, or punching. A constellation of several punching bags suggests torsos, and their exposure to repetitive blows, to violence, to the ability to bear, to vulnerability and endurance, sweat and exhaustion, suspension in waiting for violence, or repair. Objects without will, or a strange version of transitional objects. They replace someone dearly missed and endure the punches, or hugging, kissing or biting. A video shows a close-up of a throat that continuously swallows, an abys of a hellish feminine opening and the presence of something phallic. Penetration becomes devouring, the distinction and the corporeal identity of these operations becomes blurred, and renders present the ambiguity of emotions of sadness and desire.

 

Text by Alena Alexandrova, June 2023