Morten Skrøder Lund & Laura Ní Fhlaibhín
Wet Suction Spins Forever
a fluid courting
Installation View
Wet Suction Spins Forever, can be seen as an entangled conversation; a fluid courting, where extra-humanly sensations become the substrate for an anomalous ecology. Cultivated by artist Laura Ní Fhlaibhín, in this exhibition a series of recent paintings by Morten Skrøder Lund are contextualised alongside changing, changeable ecosystems. Effusing one another, here abstracted gestures rub up with nature, dissolving and germinating, creating a restive tension within the space of the gallery.
Installation View
Morten Skrøder Lund’s paintings are dense microcosms. Gestating since late 2022, the small square canvasses in this exhibition are brittle memories, re-visioned and re-visioned, in fleshy dabs of oil. Wholly unfixed, here matter vibrates upon and all over surfaces appearing slick, almost sticky; a sensual encounter suspended yet seeping. For Morten, abstraction—his main means of visioning the meticulous research at the centre of his practice—is a means through which he is able to shatter the hard surfaces of the didact world. In the works for this exhibition, abstraction is used as a process, one that suspends both time and narrative, in order to foreground the flows of muscular thinking. That is, a process through which to vision the unfixable tensions of humanly life.
Wet Suction Spins Forever, will be Morten’s third presentation with Belmacz. Here, hung high upon the gallery’s walls, the surfaces of these reverberating paintings become rousing constellations, and a context nurtured by Laura Ní Fhlaibhín in order to enliven her own dynamic ecosystems.
Composed from mobile ash-wood planters, filled with cucumber vines and vivacious greenery, Laura Ní Fhlaibhín’s ecosystems are generous sites dedicated and designed to foreground the knowledge-bodies of Leopard Slugs. Throughout Wet Suction Spins Forever, Laura’s ecosystems will not just vision life, in its three-dimensional form, but house life as earthly structures hosting regular visits from a cornucopia of Leopard Slugs. (It is of note that Laura’s ecosystems and the activation of these through the slug visits has been developed in conversation with the senior curator of molluscs at Natural History Museum London.) Building upon her project Slug Love, that embraces the learning experiences afforded by the acrobatic mating rituals of Leopard slugs—experiences that Laura presents in this exhibition through an edible potato paper sex guide—the earthly environments established by Laura not only foregrounds the perspective of slugs but, alongside Morten’s paintings, provides a platform from which we are able to glimmer new possibilities for humanly life; those given when we embrace an erotics found in fluid ways of life.
Installation View
Installation View
Morten Skrøder Lund, Untitled (Stripes and More), 2023
acrylic and oil on canvas, 40 x 30 cm
Morten Skrøder Lund (b.1980, Vejle, Denmark), completed his MFA at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts under the supervision of Professor Tumi Magnusson. A mass of impasto, Morten paintings are dense microcosms. Here, memories and moments are re-visioned and re-visioned, in fleshy dabs of oil, acrylic and gesso. Abstract and unmoored, these surfaces vibrate, casting the solidity of life to the wind.
Selected exhibitions include: Wet Suction Spins Forever, Belmacz, London (2023); Lys over Lolland, Sukkerfabrikken, Denmark (2019); Parterre, Kunstscenen, Copenhagen (2019); merge, Christian Andersen, Copenhagen (2018); ome, Belmacz Gallery (2018); Occupied With Imaginations, Galleri Ping-Pong, Malmö (2018); IF YOU DON’T LIKE ART, GOODBYE, FUCK OFF, GO-HOME…, Nordic Contemporary Art Collection, Vestfossen (2017); Becoming Zero, Galleri Flach, Stockholm (2017); Yey, an unusual way of spelling yay, Jir Sandel, Los Angeles (2016); Mustang, LTD Gallery, Los Angeles (2016); Lyst, Christian Andersen, Copenhagen (2015); Group Show V, Alexander Levy, Berlin (2014); Wellbound, Belmacz, London (2014); Circus T M, Belmacz, London (2014); Hang, Christian Andersen, Copenhagen (2013); il monaco, Ringsted Galleriet, Ringsted (2013); Ibur, with Jonas Jensen, NoMad, Frankfurt (2012); Master, Christian Andersen, Copenhagen (2011); Such a Short Memorial Form, Phonebos IMO, Copenhagen (2010); Brief Relief, Koh-i-noor, Copenhagen (2008); Moist Envelope, Henningsen Contemporary, Copenhagen (2008).
Morten’s paintings feature in the public collection of the Danish Arts Council, Copenhagen.
Morten lives and works in Copenhagen.
Laura Ní Fhlaibhín (Dublin, Ireland) completed her MFA, First Class Honours with Distinction at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK in 2019. Laura works with materials related to healing and nourishment. Sifting stories, materials and traces associated with site, memory, myth, narratives of care and the casting of spells, she creates complex but pithy material scenarios. These may incorporate condensed sculptural images, drawings, text, performance and formal gatherings of elements that serve as ritual artefacts and talismans.
Selected exhibitions include: Wet Suction Spins Forever, Belmacz, London (2023); Wet wishes, Britta Rettberg, Munich (2023); Slug Love, Luna Elaine Project Space, London, UK (2022); Beuys Open Source, Belmacz, London (2022); Trailblazer, Pallas Project Studios, Dublin (2021); Róisín, silver, rockie, Palfrey Gallery, London (2020); In-between Seasons, two person show, Space Union, Seoul (2020); Caol Áit, Burren College of Art, Ballyvaughan (2019); Balm, Goldsmiths MFA Degree Show, London (2019).
Laura lives and works between London and Ireland
Installation View