Short Speech at Kohta, 15 October 2025
Possession. What is it like to be possessed by shapes? And what does that even mean? It could mean, for example, that the body/medium, when taking action, does so in a way that the circulation of successive movements and gestures results in a relatively coherent image.
How does it happen? We don’t know, because one surprise follows another. Possession by shapes throws the body/medium into the role of an actor in this play – or perhaps more accurately, an actant among shapes. A cicerone. A a result, it cultivates a kind of competence in collaboration with forms.
And what is the body/medium itself?
The first person to approach this notion was Marcel Duchamp. In a speech delivered in Houston in 1957, he said, roughly:
The artist acts like a medium who, in the labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks their path towards clarity. In a sense, the artist is blind and should accept that blindness – because it is a force much deeper than the unconscious.
In short: what our inclinations and temperament reveal takes on certain shapes. Different at different stages of life. For the body/medium, the abilities to influence and to be influenced always go hand in hand – they mutually adjust and complement each other in the process of action.
At Kohta, we are presented with a scene of objects – or, rather, we are within them.
Two large figures/objects from the sculpture Goodnight are engaged in an internal relationship – a dialogue with one another – as well as an external one: a dialogue with the viewer.
The male head/mask of the tall, yellow, open sculpture ‘ominously’ observes the smaller, ‘innocent’ female mask, placed on top of the dark brown, lower, rounded, closed body of the second sculpture. The gaze of the second figure is represented by two beams – peacock feather shafts – that stretch towards the inside of the yellow sculpture, but also sweep across the surrounding space.
Another version of the spatial relationship between these sculptures is the two heads – male and female – lying on the floor, fused together.
In the mall-mounted sculpture Hasta la muerte, a head/mask hooked onto the corner of a wardrobe door looks at and observes a vertical plank standing upright.
The sculpture Analogical Construction: Royden and Elisabeth is a condensed summary of observations of a couple – my friends. Together with Untitled Sculpture No. 14 and Two, they for a kind of spatial-temporary context for the large sculptures Goodnight and Hasta la muerte.
Working with shapes naturally draws one into a state of possession by the evolution of shapes – by the origins of the forms of asymmetrical, invertebrate, cephalopod organisms.
There are marine maps from 2024 – an attempt to connect with a separate, barely visible world through manual contact improvisation in recycled material Bricolage?
The above remarks, of course, are a broad simplification – highlighting certain aspects of the objects’ content.
Let me return briefly once again to Duchamp’s speech in Houston. Duchamp strongly emphasised the role of the witness, the viewer, the ally – who completes the ‘creative act’ with their contribution.
The selection of works for the current exhibition at Kohta is the work of Anders Kreuger – his casting. That, too, is yet another aspect of the body/medium, which we all possess. Anders, thank you!
Marek Chlanda
