A vision of perfection. An object of affection
August 8 - 30, 2014
Søren Hüttel
Opening: August 8, 17:00 - 22:00
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Where were you when you watched “The Royal Wedding Massacre” in the television show “Dynasty”? Or what would your christmas be without ‘Disney’s Christmas Show’ or your New Year without “Dinner for One”?
It’s easy to ask yourself those questions when New Shelter Plan invites you for the opening of Søren Hüttels exhibition “A vision of perfection. An object of affection”.
In a contemporary visual language the exhibition process sentimentality and the personal recollection through different references of the international television and popular culture, which we watched from a Danish standpoint in the 80s and 90s.
On the premises of the sentimental, nostalgic, recollection and tradition which the traditional television media plays upon, Hüttels exhibition should be seen as an investigation of the personal recollection and the recognition as a premise in the visual arts. This is why Søren Hüttel has carved the bathing suit of Pamela Anderson from Baywatch in marble, model ALF and includes his own photographic depictions of different locations from televisions series like Walsh’s house in Beverly Hills 902010.
Sentimentality in the visual arts has been dismissed as bad taste ever since Clement Greenberg wrote his essay “Avantgarde and Kitsch” in 1930. Hüttels exhibition is though a more complex interpretation than the traditional discussion of high-low culture.
Hüttels exhibition is not a critique of the sentimental or the nostalgic nor does it take an ironic distance to the subject matters, but it’s more a consideration of the cultural visual references which are staged in a visual art context. Thereby it plays at the irrational, the unimportant and the meaningless.
The entire exhibition is constructed so the visitor enters a room which are in themselves a stage of the works – a complete installation which is also a stage. Hüttels installations are always eclectic stagings of single works and elements which are in contradictory relation. An eclectic entity where these elements for themselves and in the entity appear as an answer to each other but at the same time forms an entity.
The exhibition is supported by The Danish Arts Foundation
