Hunger for Aggression

Oslo Kunstforening is delighted to announce the first solo show in Oslo with the Danish artist duo Hesselholdt & Mejlvang.

Hunger for Aggression raises subjects such as the pros and cons of cultural heritage, nationalism and its symbols, imagery and aesthetics. The exhibition takes its starting point in the private sphere, in the safety of our home. Drawings, sculptures and manipulated ready-mades forms an installation around the anatomy of fear raising subject matters that we usually only encounter through the media, hardly ever close to home.

Hand crafted jars, ceramic sculptures, drawings and embroideries sets the viewer in a twisted domestic environment. Although the jars are not placed in a window frame as decoration, instead they are lined up on two low shelves in the shape of a saltire (diagonal cross). A collection of tablecloths and bed sheets have left the linen closet to be colored in red and black and sewn together into a curtain. A carpet sprinkled with fascist symbols is hung on a wall. Small ceramic sculptures, glazed in brown and black, depict headless bodies dressed in Gestapo-, SS-, Hitlerjugend- and Italian fascist uniforms. A series of drawings portrait face tattoos where the facial features have been left out. Similar tattoos are found on the jars, giving each one its own signature, personifying them. Some of the depicted tattoos are distorted, as they originate from photographs found on the web, turned into twisted riddles, were the already hidden symbolism becomes even more difficult to access.

The saltire is connected to the white cross, found on the Danish flag Danneborg, but probably more so to the American Confederate flag from 1861. The Battle Flag signaled the rebels, and became a symbol of the breakup with the Union during the Civil War. With time the flag became increasingly associated with discrimination and racism. Far-right groups such as the Ku Klux Klan use it and it is also found in the symbol gallery of the neo Nazi movement along with the Iron Cross, the number combination 88, the letter W, all of which can be found in Hunger for Aggression.

The exhibition has been made possible through the kind support of the Fritt Ord foundation, Norske Kunstforeninger and the Danish Agency for Culture.

Oslo Kunstforening/Oslo Fine Art Society is supported by the City of Oslo and Arts Council Norway.