SACRED MOUNTAIN
BY JERSZY SEYMOUR
22 FEBRUARY – 27 APRIL 2019
Etage Projects is delighted to announce the opening of the solo exhibition SACRED MOUNTAIN by Jerszy Seymour. The main piece and title of the show acts as both a climbable totem to our physical, mental and spiritual existence and as a fully functioning kitchen. Composed of a rational free stack of the minimal elements needed for a kitchen, the steel surfaces are painted in a libidinous instinctual act with the purpose to find a schizophrenic harmony between success and failure where other forms are still possible. Together with the other ‘Proto Tools’ offering various stages of function and pre-function, and the ‘Abstract Cave-ism’ wall mural, the intention is to bring us to a primordial position where the border between user and viewer, holy and profane, domination and emancipation, and digestion and meditation are broken down and to where a new perspective can be achieved that incorporates without being mediated.
Set in the Berlin ring bahn as a minimal trip, the accompanying film ‘Thank God Hip-Hop, Pop Art, and (Your) Desire are Back’ is a pared back contemporary retelling of the mythical search for the holy grail (the prototype of all road movies) that in the eyes of Emma Jung was meant as the search for the divine, unattainable in the mindset of man in his time. The film, acting as a kind of dynamic painting, is an abstract cut and paste of Excalibur, Space Odyssey 2001, Repo Man, Monty Pythons Holy Grail and The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, where the retelling rejects the classical patriarchal conclusion, Arthur and Guinevere are expelled from the train and the rest of the cast come back in to dance.
Because if I can’t dance…
Jerszy Seymour is an artist, designer and co-founder and director of the Dirty Art Department, masters in art and design at the Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam. Berlin-based artist’s work ranges from industrially produced and post-industrially produced objects to the creation of situations, installation, performance and music where he is interested in ways to reconsider our inhabitation of the planet and therefore also to reconsider the inhabitation of our minds. He introduces three main concepts to achieve this: the non-Gesamt Gesamtkunstwerk, the idea of the every-topia and the notion of constant humour. He was born in Berlin in 1968 and grew up in London where he studied at South Bank Polytechnic (1987 – 1990) and industrial design at the Royal College of Art (1991 – 1993). He works with companies such as Magis, Vitra and Alessi. He has had significant shows and projects with institutions and museums such as the MAK in Vienna, MARTA Herford, Palais de Tokyo, Vitra Design Museum, Lafayette Foundation, Kunsthaus Glarus and the MUDAM in Luxembourg. His work is a part of many permanent collections including the MoMA New York, the Centre Pompidou and the Fonds National de’Art Contemporain in France. He has taught and given many workshops including at the Royal College of Art in London, the Domus Academy in Milan, the ECAL in Lausanne, the HfG in Karlsruhe, HBK Saarbrucken, Academy Eindhoven, and has been a guest professor at the UdK in Berlin.
