Absolutely Never Sitting Duck

solo exhibition at Gallery van Fanny Freytag, Amsterdam

curated by Jelmer Wijnstroom

2024 

Absolutely Never Sitting Duck is an installation with ceramic, drawing, video and text that explores potential of the comic object to generate a subversive recursivity.

“The image of the little dabbling duck catches me. I’m looking out over an expanse of water and his upturned tush turns my landscape view around its axis by 90 degrees. If the surface of the water is a membrane, his position puts me on the outside, literally the tail end. His business is under the surface while the superfluous buoyant side is here with me, upside-down on the top. It’s like being jovially mooned, or being shown what category of thing belongs on this side of the water’s surface – I’m just an ass here with the other asses. I get dizzy thinking about a tail coming up to replace the tail, turning tail over tail-end only. If under the mirrored surface of the water, there was an outside ass-end again.

The comic object, in how it points constantly to the invisible but contingent other side – does not sit comfortably in one realm of reality. It reveals membranes, boundaries, structures, definitions and categories. It’s at the place where the water splits. By looping a referential arm outside this side to point to its complementary opposite – it shows us not only the boundary we ascribe to this side, but also that boundary’s fallibility. But the comic object may also suddenly and subversively appear in a tool or a machine - achieved through its subversive inutility - refusal to function. A weapon, a decoy, a trap or a tool that turns out to be not useful for any task, but even impedes or irritates, allows for escape or instigates chaos. Points to itself and falls apart.”

photos by Anne Lakeman