Exhibition: anthrObscene
Thu 8 Feb - Mon 21 Apr
The Art Gallery is showing Gustaf Brom's new work: anthrObscene. The title is a play on words with the term anthropocene (Swedish = anthropocene), which is used with reference to our time as a geological epoch (the time following the Holocene) to draw attention to the impact of humans on our earth. The exhibition title combines the words anthro (human) with obscene, as a question about the human drama. In 9 tableaux, a stripped-down story is built about an idea of a civilization and about a species' relationship to others. Gustaf Brom's work has long revolved around the gap between being 'nature', as being in a body, and being 'intellect', as that which reads experience. Focusing on this gap has become a way of trying to understand how we have moved from a state of being one with our surroundings, to becoming a culture that sees itself as standing outside the organic flow, with all that this has meant for other species and our own living environment. anthrObscene is an attempt to see patterns in the journey from wholeness to separation, and back again, the inescapability of being part of this wholeness.
About the artist gustaf broms (b. 1966) is active in the forests of Vendel and works in the borderland between performance, video and installation. He began working with photography and installation, but it was above all two works that made him start working with the more formless processes of performance. In 1991, broms burned all his works and realized that the intensity of the action and the remaining ash far surpassed anything he had done before.