SALTY METAL
curated by Lukas Soldo & Lola Pfeifer
Artists: Janine Weger, Alisa Omelianceva, Lukas Soldo, , Lola Pfeifer
CLOUDS: LOOK AT THAT.
CLOUDS: THAT ONE?
C: EXACTLY. GO TO THE SIDE.
C: YOU.
IT EMERGES. FLAUNTS ITSELF. GLEAMS. LOOKS UP.
C: IS IT LOOKING AT US?
IT STARES. STARES PAST THE LIGHT. IT HAD BEEN WAITING, AND NOW
SHE WAS HERE. BUT SO WAS SHE.
C: I’M FLYING BACK.
C: GOOD.
IT GAZES HELPLESSLY AS THE CLOUDS DRIFT BY, COVERING.
C: WE ARE VAST.
C: MH, THAT’S TRUE.
IT STAYS DARK FOR A LONG TIME, BUT NOT FOREVER.
YOU CANNOT WALK BETWEEN THE SHADOWS OF CLOUDS. THEY TOOMUST MOVE ON.
SALTY METAL means neither metal nor truly salty. Rather, with the title SALTY METAL, clouds assemble. The Poet Retallack imagines a
hummingbird-engine, mechanical wings thrashing the air into a fevered
vision:
“...WILD IDEA THE WILD IDEA ONE HAS JUST (HAD) AS A HUMMINGBIRD
FLIES BY JUST AS ONE THINKS THAT’S A FINE DELUXE MODEL
BUMBLE BEE ENGINE WITH MECHANICAL WINGS BEATING THE SKY
INTO A WILD IDEA A HOT MAJESTIC INTERLUDE CONTAINING
IMPROBABLE BEAUTY PROFANITY [...] ALL THIS AND MORE BEFORE THE
CLOUDS PART AND THE SUN TURNS INTO A COFFEE MUG OR A
DOUGHNUT.”[1]
Neither coffee mugs nor doughnuts can be found in the exhibition. Instead:
Onion rust. [2] Clouds can be touched in the chill of metal [3] , and the bitter gesture of staring at a phone reappears in oil on rusting steel [4]. Orange light as the by-product of one of the oldest steelworks in Europe envelops the room, just as it envelops the city in rusty illuminated clouds of fog at night.[5]
Too much salt: death by electrolytic shock. Too little—distilled water,
stripped of minerals—also fatal. Irony is carved into the body, bipolar andabsolute. SALTY METAL is—perhaps—resentful metal. Metal leaning against its sober destiny. Metal that chooses to rust out of sheer defiance. Maybe it is the memory of salt, leaving a metallic aftertaste on the tongue. Krull manages to distill the poetics from the function:
“Through the delicate iron net suspended in midair stream things, ships, sea, houses, landscape, and harbor. They lose their delimited form: as one descends, they circle into each other and intermingle simultaneously.”[6]
The exhibition intermingles the poetics, salt and the rust of metal into something else entirely. Like clouds the works (and metal) in the exhibition lose their form and function. SALTY METAL is perhaps nothing more than clouds, drifting by midair.
text written by Lukas Soldo & Lola Pfeifer
[1] Retallack, Joan. Memnoir. Post-Apollo Press, 2004. p.13
[2] see Alisa Omelianceva’s work
[3] see Lukas Soldo’s work
[4] see Lola Pfeifer’s work
[5] see Janine Weger’’s work
[6] Boersma, Max. ‘From Material to Infrastructure: Germaine Krull’s Métal’. October 173
(September 2020): 118–42. https://doi.org/10.1162/octo_a_00405. p.91