New Works

Pachinko is pleased to present NEW WORKS, an exhibition comprising three sculptures by Oslo-based artist Fredrik Berberg. Through a perspective that is both analytical and imaginative, the exhibition deals both with structures in nature, virtual spaces and translation.

Berberg’s process begins in the clean, diffuse-lit space of digital software, where he sketches and models his sculptures. This virtual environment, characterised by a uniform, non-directional lighting, provides a highly controlled, but ultimately flat and ghostly space. When these designs move into the real world, where matter (and especially Pachinko) is inherently “dirty” and subject to use and wear, the sculptures keep some of their diffuse smoothness. Although altered and ultimately compromised, the perceptual blur remains whether through the simulated glow of a screen or the ambient warmth of a gallery.

The exhibition space itself feels slightly off – both overexposed and dim – setting the stage for three sculptures that share this sense of quiet distortion. The most condensed work in this exhibition, Stuttering (attitude), is a vertical array of white-lacquered stilettos. Originally designed to evoke a cat arching its back, the stiletto follows a dual conceptual thread, both common to the practice of the artist: one of biological mimicry and another of aesthetic obfuscation, masking the ordinary shape of the foot. Another, Fashion statement, rests on three headless dogs, each tripods, while the third piece, Gesture (Palm Tree), is held upright by a tin-cast, aqua-chrome tennis sock. In each work, the base – whether stiletto, paw or sock – connects to Bataille’s writing about the big toe¹: it is where the body meets the ground, both literally and symbolically.

¹ ”Life entails, in fact, seeing oneself as a back and forth movement from refuse to the ideal, and from the ideal to refuse — a rage that is easily directed against an organ as base as the foot”

Georges Bataille, “The Big Toe”, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939, edited by Allan Stoekl, 1985