Erik Larsson – Spirits

ERIK LARSSON is a visual artist who lives and works between London (UK) and Stockholm (SE). His work is sculpture based – including imagery, readymades and fragments from popular culture and the everyday –often presented as installations that evoke a landscape of contemporary signs. LARSSON graduated from Slade School of Fine Art in London in 2013, and has shown work at Performa13 New York City, US (2013); Udstillingsstedet Q, Copenhagen, Denmark (2013); The Institute of Jamais Vu, (2012), London, UK; and at La Casa Encendida (2012), Madrid (ES), among others.

SPIRITS – WELCOME TO THE FUTURE

Some time in the future the future will not look like the past anymore. There will no things, no stuff, no objects that speak of what we were, only of what we are becoming. In this future, the actions of future people are more predictable, more transparent – somehow less concerned with life, poetry, interaction, fucking, talking, eating, shitting, sleeping, death, than in the past that is the present. In this future, the future men and women's only preoccupation is sublimation – transforming all the crap of the past into golden, lush sunlight. All their worries, their anger, their love, confusion, their desire, will evaporate, like spirits. In this future there will be no babies, no cats and dogs, no idols, no gods, no parents – only lovers without hearts, murderers devoid of hatred, violence without passion no bliss, no forgiveness – because none of this is needed, it´s gone, evaporated like spirits in the sun. This future might look like this: One large room, or several large rooms, connected like rooms in a five star hotel suite – the concrete floors with peeling black paint is softer than the softest carpet, bare light bulbs are silver candelabra, the plywood bar a cornucopia of delights, the mirror ball a chandelier, the filthy restrooms smell of honeysuckle, the mirrors make everyone look the same. And everyone´s beautiful and smart, they are in no hurry, everybody will get laid tonight, everybody will be filled with the spirits and slide down the surface of things, make them soft, golden, penetrable like clay, like butter, like jell-o.

- ARNE SKAUG OLSEN