The city that never gets any sleep. Turn me on. Ever since Edison invented the lightbulb, big cities everywhere have been associated with lights, with sky-lines glittering far off in the distance, city lights like eyes in the night, wires cables network solutions and all kinds of pollutions to keep the whole thing going. Stank you smelly much. If they can’t make it there, they can’t make it anywhere.
All artists’ works are said to be self-portraits whether figurative or abstract or bearing any kind of likeness whatsoever to their subject and what with Klara Liden performing repetitive, minimal, and what often looks like physically quite exhaustive tasks in her own videos. I mean, it’s her alright but then performing as a kind of extra, body double or stand-in. Social climbing, it’s a lonely thing. From rags to riches and back again. Likewise oftentimes bringing attention to what’s maybe some of society’s less spot-lit sides, its non-sites and service entrances off the beaten track beneath the arches hidden in plain view not necessarily meant to be looked at. Streaming like was I dreaming pinch me punch me bring it on again to where the streets have no names and anyone’s up for anything really. Achtung baby. Human kindness is overflowing. Check the radar change the channel. Life’s a beach and then you get old, do I dare to wear my trousers rolled!!? Come on and on one and many, come true it’s up to you. Rhythm to the rhythm. You know what, just never turn me off. — Karl Holmqvist*
A new show of Liden’s sculpture and video work is on view in London. See link below.
Through October 31.
Sadie Coles HQ
1 Davies Street, Mayfair, London.
Klara Liden, Turn Me On, Sadie Coles HQ, September 3, 2020–October 31, 2020, installation photographs by Robert Glowacki. Images courtesy and © the artists and Sadie Coles HQ.
