Anna-Karin Rasmusson – CHART Art Fair: Charlottenborg, Copenhagen

Cecilia Hillström Gallery is pleased to present a new site-specific video installation by Anna-Karin Rasmusson for CHART Art Fair 2021. In The Order of Things / Sakernas tillstånd, Rasmusson continues to explore the physical and emotional facets of human interaction. The work includes a four-channel installation with two main videos and two supporting videos presented in a rough installation typical for the artist. The different characters in the videos – or maybe the same character in different stages of life – are repeatedly performing in chaos. With different approaches towards the issue at hand, the characters are involved in clumsy attempts of circling a problem, trying to close the door on it or simply wrecking things. The large-scale video projection, a close-up of a breakdown (or breakthrough?), gives a backdrop to what is at stake.

In the work, Rasmusson explores various issues like sorrow and frustration through the metaphor of the circle and the spiral. Focusing on the unformulated and the unconscious, Rasmusson digs deeper into complex feelings and mechanisms – parts of our inner self. The ongoing process of ignoring the issue at hand, hiding (from) it, only to be replaced by an unstoppable state which spirals out of control and back again is constant in the work. A recurring theme in Rasmusson’s art is the Sisyphean nature of life. With repetition and exaggeration, she pinpoints the hard physical and emotional work that comes with it – trying to succeed. It also puts emphasis on the pursuit, the longing after something unspecified that motivates the struggle and perhaps makes it worth the effort – after all, life is not a punishment as it was for Sisyphus.

With finesse, Anna-Karin Rasmusson carefully navigates the emotional landscape of what it means to be human, circling the lifelong pursuit of making sense of our emotions, relationships to others and ourselves.