Non-Target Unknown

The Dancing Snake

À te voir marcher en cadence,
Belle d'abandon,
On dirait un serpent qui danse
Au bout d'un bâton.

To see you rhythmically advancing
Seems to my fancy fond
As if it were a serpent dancing
Waved by the charmer's wand.

Charles Baudelaire, ”Le Serpent Qui Danse”, ”The Dancing Snake” in Les Fleurs du Mal, 1857

I dreamt you came back.

An essay entitled “Death Explained to Children” was casually lying on the bedside table. Among other advice and explanations, chapter nine was relating to what extent humans would often reincarnate into animals, cats, dogs or snakes. So it was you, the dancing snake. Twisting around my neck, worming your way out of the bedroom, brushing the purple walls. A few years ago I left for Los Angeles. The day of my departure you asked me what I would like to keep as a souvenir. Among all the books, the carpets and the pictures, I chose a gold ring that was shaped like a snake, rolling around its own neck. An Iranian lover of yours gave it to you some decades ago but, as far as I remember, you never wore it even once. I wear it everyday.

Did I dream you dreamed about me?

You came back and you are everywhere, hidden in my bottle of water like a song to the siren, under the transparent tent displayed among my cactuses in the backyard. You are riding through my mind and my head is a pink cap with an apparent brain.

I am back to Los Angeles. They make movies here, I live here. We drive through the purple moonlight, watching MacArthur Park melting in the night. The next morning I drink my coffee slow, and I watch your shadow grow. Before the colors of our memories vanish in the eternity of silence, I would like to tell you a few words, but since words have been cruelly missed, I borrow those of another one.

When I was a child we would stride along the aisles of the Mesopotamian Antiquities at the Richelieu sector of the Louvre, just the two of us. Our favorite sculptures were the human-headed winged bulls from Khorsabad, the Assyrian capital. They were protective genies called shedu or lamassu, and were placed as guardians at certain gates or doorways of cities and palaces. As symbols combining a man, a bull, and a bird, they offered protection against enemies. One day we visited Iran together. You landed from Paris and I arrived from L.A., and we found each other in the crowd of Tehran. A few days later, our taxi was cruising through the golden dust outside of Shiraz and, suddenly, two large dark grey figures of stone emerged at the horizon. We saw them, the winged bulls of Persepolis. We had found them, our childhood’s beloved memories, the sphinxes of the Middle East.

I am standing in the sun
I wish that I could be
A silent sphinx eternally.
I don't want any past
Only want things which cannot last
And I can't even cry
Through God knows how I try
A sphinx can never cry
And sphinxes never die.

– Martha Kirszenbaum

Lindsay Lawson Born in the United States and based in Berlin, Lindsay Lawson received her BFA in Sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University, her MFA in New Genres from UCLA, and attended the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main. Her work spans media such as film, video, installation, photography, sculpture, performance, text, and a particular type of contractual legal agreements she called Arrangements. Her practice often deals with the presence and and agency of objecthood in virtual and physical spaces. Lawson was an artist in residence at the Thun Ceramic Residency in Bolzano, Italy in 2017. In 2016, she presented a large-scale performance at the site of the reconstruction of the historic Berliner Schloss in the 9th Berlin Biennale and participated in the 9th Shanghai Biennale in 2012. She is represented by Gillmeier Rech in Berlin and Galerie Lisa Kandlhofer in Vienna. Her work has been exhibited internationally at venues such as Herald St., London; Frutta Gallery, Rome; LAXART, Los Angeles; Yossi Milo Gallery, New York; Carroll/Fletcher, London; 1646, The Hague; Galerie Tobias Naehring, Leipzig; and Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, Toronto.

Pierre Clement is a French artist who lives and works inbetween Bordeaux, Paris and French Pyrenees Mountains. Clement' work analyses the dialogue of nature, artifice, technology, myths and conspiracies. His most recent works which employs several mediums, adresses how post-humanity will deal with its environnment, here or somewhere else. Clement has received several grants from French Ministry of Culture and participated in group exhibitions in France and abroad, FRAC Montpellier, FRAC Toulouse, Galerie Escougnou-Cetraro, Paris, Galerie Derouillon, Paris, Galerie Joseph Tang, Paris, Clearview LTD, London, Jeune Creation at Thaddeus Ropac, Paris. He had solo shows at OJ, Istanbul, Delta, Roubaix, Maison Salvan, Toulouse, Ultrastudio, Pescara and XPO gallery Paris. His works are in french private and public collections such as FRAC Aquitaine. He's represented by Escougnou-Cetraro, Paris, where he will make his first solo show in May 2018.

Exhibition times and location:
Thursday 11–19
Friday – Sunday 11–16
(free of charge entry)
Opening Friday, May 11th 18–21
Platform Stockholm
Lövholmsgränd 12
11743 Stockholm