Yngve Holen. Parasagittal Brain

Each chop a slice, a split, a cut, a crack, a selected point – a defining crop. Each chop is definite but is advanced by persistent hesitation and postponement, which has lead to a series of works that circle around a sense of ‘hit and miss’ – hit and miss in that there is a strong consciousness of the actual moment of the chop being the crucial, unrectifiable moment - the point of no return.

It is in this manner that Holen treats the cutting and assembling of the everyday snapshot imagery. In the exhibition Parasagittal Brain he deals with breakfast imagery; nearly promotional pictures, taken at the moment that the breakfast is freshly served or prepared, present the breakfast at it’s most perfect; the soft pastel colours of the continental breakfast – the colours and atmosphere that welcome us in the morning, that slowly wake up our brains and gently introduce us to the day. Analogous to this is the crucial moment wherein one decides to get up and start the day, where the having breakfast in itself can be a ceremonial postponing of its start, a slow and gentle softening of the chop.

For his first exhibition at Johan Berggren Gallery, Yngve Holen shows a selection of electric water kettles, a ceramic sink and breakfast imagery. The kettles, halved or cut up by water using a waterjet cutter, are displayed on shelves and a table. Likewise, a sink has been divided into two parts. Incapable of fulfilling its original role as water basin, it takes on the identity of two large fruit-bowls. On the walls are canvas stretchers stretched with transparent PVC – the PVC is printed with images of the artists’ recent breakfasts. As cut off moments the imagery is divided between untouched freshly served breakfasts, and breakfast leftovers.

What guides these actions is an interest in the imagination of both the physical and metaphorical conception of the left and right brain half, and the ascribing of certain qualities to each brain half. In anatomy the vertical separating of left from right sections of the body – a separating into halves – is defined by what is called the sagittal plane. ‘Parasagittal’ is any plane parallel to the midline – an actually unnecessary term, as all parallels to the separating midline are actually defined as sagittal. Parallel to the midline, but its distance to the midline undefined, the parasagittal becomes the symbol for hesitation - the identified but not defined.

Yngve Holen (NO, b.1982) graduated last summer from the Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main where he studied fine arts. He has exhibited at Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt am Main; Paloma Presents, Zürich; 21st Century at Chisenhale Gallery, London; Landings Projectspace, Vestfossen and New Jerseyy, Basel. He co-curated the exhibition The Smart Frrridge, Chilly Forecast for Internet Fridge, which currently runs at the Kunstverein Medienturm, Graz. Holen is also co-initiator of XYM and organiser of the club BODY XEROX.

Yngve Holen
Parasagittal Brain