PRESENTATION: Near to the Wild Heart

The exhibition “Near to the Wild Heart” brings together works by artists from different generations that trace sensorial, non-verbal, spiritual or otherwise invisible but vividly sensed layers of experience. The “wild heart” referred to in the exhibition title alludes to the essential force of life that animates the world. This vital energy is encountered in the exhibition as desire, magic, sexuality, imagination, ecstacy, nature, or the mystical divine.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Lunds konsthall Archive

Central to many of the artworks in the exhibition “Near to the Wild Heart” is the dissolution of boundaries—between the I and the other, the body and the world, or between inner and outer landscapes and experiences—showing how life and death, the human, creativity and nature are all continuous processes of transformation and becoming. The title of the exhibition is borrowed from Clarice Lispector’s novel of the same name (Perto do coraçao selvagem, 1943) in which the human mind and body are interwoven with the animalistic force of life and its mysteriously elusive inner being. Lispector had in turn borrowed the phrase “near to the wild heart” from a passage in James Joyce’s “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” (1916), another author famous for portraying inner psychological reality through changeable streams of consciousness and the transgression of boundaries. At Lunds konsthall the phrase shapeshifts once again, becomes exhibition title and transforms the art gallery into yet another body to temporarily house its wildly beating heart. To create her work, Özlem Altın  digs through a photographic archive she has amassed over many years, combining found images with her own photographs into a dense amalgam. Some emotionally resonant images—the mask, the mermaid, the heron—are symbols that she frequently returns to; they embody something part human and part animal, or a state of in-between-ness, and they appear again and again in her work. Kinga Bartis’ approach to painting lies outside the boundaries of the classic school of the medium. Eschewing labels, Bartis envisions painting as a means of breaking free from the habitual relationship of defining and redefining of our existence—Bartis choose to instead look towards a more multidisciplinary and open approach. This approach can also be seen in Kinga Bartis’ technique and composition. Traditionally defined relationships or perceived hierarchies between foreground and background are set aside. Repeating imagery of bodies, figures, plants, natural elements and landscapes combine to reflect the realties of a shifting world. Recognized internationally for her multi-dimensional art work using diverse media, Mary Beth Edelson has been a dominant force in feminist groups and actions since the 1960s. Her prominence in, and significant contributions to, the feminist art world make Edelson an ideal selection for The Feminist Institute’s mission to “be the world’s most significant online repository for the study of feminist documentation.” This Feminist Institute project on Edelson highlights the depth of artistic production and historical documentation that is found in her archives now in the Fales Library and Special Collections at New York University. Damla Kilickiran is an artist currently living in Oslo. Drawing inspiration from narratives and cosmologies within spiritual traditions, her work meditates upon topics related to alternate states of being as a method for image production and knowledge. Often leading ones thoughts to automatism, focusing on the thresholds of language within the introspective body and its relation to the world. Jochen Lempert’s work is often presented in large compositions of black-and-white photographs demanding close inspection. This time is no different. Ranging from medium-sized to small and tiny prints, this exhibition of his now classic repertoire of flora and fauna gives visitors the feeling of being at an amateur’s show, where the standards of high-end presentation have been disregarded. Since the early 1990s Lempert has been known as the photographer who was once a biologist, and with this knowledge the scale of the gallery space seems ideal; a room not big enough to belittle such subtle work, which could easily be confused with scientific materials of a lesser order. An artist and initiator of various research projects combining artistic approach and activism, Antje Majewski primarily as a painter and filmmaker. Her transdisciplinary and collaborative practice explores ecofeminism, political ecology of things and nature/culture entanglement. In her figurative paintings bordering on photorealism, Antje Majewski is interested in traditional existential questions as well as the psychological and social relationships of the individual. Issa Samb has developed a recognisable approach of provocation, collective action and improvisation that is rooted in modes of contemporary art and theatre, the role of the artist in the society, and the interactivity of traditional African performance. This comes together in sculptural form at the courtyard of his atelier in the Rue de Jules Ferry in Dakar, where found and transformed objects and materials including threads, fabrics, clothing, branches, stones and other ephemera are installed around a tree. Olivier Guesselé-Garai is a multidisciplinary artist. He was part of one of Europe’s first graffiti scenes, an activist in the alternative Parisian squatting scene, and a co-founder of art collectives and artist-run spaces. His primary forms of expression are visual abstractions, which he extends as much as possible into a general approach to the world, demonstrating a distinct sensitivity to poetry. Beatriz Santiago Muñoz is a Puerto Rican film and video maker who received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The uncontrived, observational style of her work aligns it with the sensibility of documentary film while also contributing to a blurring of boundaries between fact and fiction. For example “The Black Cave” (2013) draws on interviews with archaeologists and local residents, and explores the Paso del Indio, an indigenous burial ground in Puerto Rico that was discovered during the construction of a highway and eventually paved over. Max Walter Svanberg was a Swedish surrealist painter, illustrator, and designer. His most prevalent motifs were of women’s bodies merged with elements of flora and fauna. Gudrun Åhlberg was the only female artist to belong to the “Imaginisterna”, a group of artists in Malmö from 1945 to 1956 formed by CO Hultén, Max Walter Svanberg and Anders Österlin. The number of members varied, but among those who gradually joined the group were Gösta Kriland, Bertil Gadö and Bertil Lundberg.The Imaginists’ art had elements of imaginative surrealism, often with motifs of nature, women and eroticism. This was combined with a painterly, expressive and poetically ambiguous style that broke away from the earlier surrealism and was more in line with the informal art that gained more and more followers from the end of the Second World War.

Artists: Özlem Altın, Kinga Bartis, Mary Beth Edelson, Damla Kilickiran, Jochen Lempert, Antje Majewski / Issa Samb / Olivier Guesselé-Garai, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Max Walter Svanberg, Gudrun Åhlberg

Photo: Near to the Wild Heart, Installation view Lunds konsthall, 2024, Courtesy Lunds konsthall

Info: Curator: Lisa Rosendahl, Lunds konsthall, Mårtenstorget 3, Lund, Sweden, Duration: 21/12/2024-16/3/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-We & Fri-Sun 12:00-17:00, Thu 12:00-20:00, https://lundskonsthall.se/