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2024
Wilson
Wilson is a work consisting of 20 prints, created through a simple, repetitive action:
a basketball is dribbled once in charcoal onto paper.
The work was carried out during a stay in a closed psychiatric ward, where the basketball was available in the common room. Each action follows the same rule, yet leaves a different trace. The repetition is not an attempt to reach a goal, but a way of allowing time and body to settle into the material.
The title refers to the ball in the film Cast Away, where an object takes on the character of a relation, a companion, and a recipient. In Wilson, the basketball functions in a similar way: as a concrete, physical counterpart within a space marked by restriction, routine, and substitution.
The prints were installed as a series in the room, hung as a kind of mapping of the variations of the action. The ball itself was included as part of the work, placed on the floor in front of the prints.
Upon discharge, the basketball was taken along. The ward replaced it with a new one. The original ball was thus substituted, just as the space was left behind and the body moved into another context. As part of the work, a photograph of the new ball is included: identical in function, but without traces.
Wilson revolves around repetition, substitution, displacement and about how systematic actions can produce temporary form within a closed space, and how objects bear witness to situations even as they are replaced by new ones.
Exhibited as part of my solo exhibition Looking for Delulu at KH7Artspace
Photos taken by Mikkel Kaldal