In the exhibition “Ballast” Steinar Haga Kristensen presents a selection of works produced in collaboration with Karen Eliot between 2006 and 2014. The method of their collaboration is characterised by their telepathic sensibility – a way of communication, which is possible by their use of telepathy, without apparent physical signals.
Numerous paintings, sculptural work and other interventions will create imagery that is best described as gestalts of the aforementioned telepathic collaborations that seeks to scrutinise the force of similarity inherent in our redundantly exuberant modernity. As backdrops for these works, Haga Kristensen has produced a number of large-scale banners – a roof to floor diptych measuring up to11 m in length. Consisting of 3D renderings documenting a prior instalment by the artist, the banners constitute a way of representation and investigation, which furthermore convey a utopian potential in regard to how an exhibit can be conceived – a sort of ghost-like view of one complex composition.
A 3D video installation plays a central part in the exhibition, reflecting the artist’s histrionic enactment of creation and reception, suggesting a preclusion of the real audience or spectator by idealising their involvement with the objects on display through an opaque and disorienting narrative.
The multiple artist identity Karen Eliot was developed in order to counter the male domination of the Neoist movement. Since then Eliot has been utilised to perform various radical artistic project. Influenced by English parapsychologist Rupert Sheldrake’s work, Eliot’s recent artistic practice is characterised by a telepathic sensibility. When at work she radiates a strong field intended for biological and metaphysical unification between brains and bodies. Eliot claims to demonstrate that – when experiencing strong fields of similarities – she is able to conduct and manipulate collective memory to such a degree that she erupts it erupts evolutionary development in the human brain or any brain.
Haga Kristensen’s montages contains diverse artistic gestures ranging from event-scores, sculpture and painting to video, performance and telepathic investigation. After publishing his “catalogue raisonné” – a dedication to Karen Eliot’s Retrospective – on the un-subjectified persona (2009), Haga Kristensen has developed staged theatrical readings of his assemblages. These ‘ideal readings’ devote to an uncanny preoccupation of the potentially communicative elements of the exhibits. Recently Haga Kristensen has been working closely with Karen Eliot. He states: “I’m struck by Karen’s intelligence and creative sensibility; it has been a great privilege to collaborate with her again”.
