LEIF HOLMSTRAND

PARTY CONDOLENCES

11 January - 11 March 2018

The met­hods be­hind Leif Holmstrand’s ob­jects and hap­pe­nings can of­ten be re­du­ced to ap­ply­ing a spec­i­fic set of ru­les on a spec­i­fic set of ma­te­ri­als, and let­ting the ri­tu­al that appears energize non-ani­mate mat­ter, ma­king it tell vi­vid non-sto­ries, or, rat­her, sto­ries ta­king place out­side lan­gua­ge.

Heavy sculp­tu­ral in­stal­la­tion pie­ces built out of gar­ba­ge, tex­ti­les and ma­ni­pu­lated cut-up furni­tu­re may al­ter­na­te with sound in­stal­la­tion, still ima­ge, croche­ting, knit­ting, text and vi­deo. Per­for­mance art also plays an im­por­tant part in this body of work. All in­di­vi­du­al pie­ces by Holmstrand have a per­for­mance qua­li­ty, a scent of props, sce­no­grap­hy, costu­mes et ce­te­ra. Many of his pro­jects are small frag­ments of a much lar­ger, pos­sibly col­lecti­ve que­er ac­ti­vist pur­suit. His re­cent works in the field of vi­su­al art deal with the sub­cul­tural phe­n­ome­na bug cha­sing, was­te as rea­dab­le cul­tural arte­facts, sick­ness, de­fen­ce of per­ver­sion, and death.

Croche­ted wall-sculp­tu­re, em­broide­red, sewn, dip­ped in black paint, al­most pos­sib­le to wear, dif­fe­rent tech­ni­ques al­ter­na­ting to grasp a non-straight, en­dange­red and stubborn life­form: this is what Par­ty Con­do­len­ces wis­hes to be and do.

Leif Holmstrand (b. 1972) is a Swedish ar­tist, mu­si­ci­an and wri­ter re­si­dent in Mal­mö. He gra­dua­ted from Mal­mö Art Aca­de­my in 2003. Holmstrand has created nu­merous ex­hi­bitions and per­for­mance works. He is also a well acclai­med wri­ter with se­ve­r­al pub­lis­hed no­vels and poems.