Post-Révolution
POST-RÉVOLUTION
Per-Oskar Leu
31 March - 23 April 2023
Centralbanken
Brugata 12
NO-0186 Oslo
There is an old man of seventy, bent over his work, pick in air, skin burnt by the sun, his head in the shade of a straw hat; his trousers of rough cloth are patched all over; he wears, inside cracked wooden clogs, stockings which were once blue, with the heels showing through. Here's a young man with his head covered in dust, his skin greyish-brown; his disgusting shirt, all in rags, exposes his arms and his flanks; leather braces hold up what is left of a pair of trousers, and his muddy leather shoes are gaping sadly in many places. The old man is on his knees, the young man is behind him, standing up, carrying a basket of stones with great energy. Alas, in this occupation you begin like the one and end like the other! Their tools are scattered here and there: a back- basket, a hand barrow, a ditching-tool, a cooking-pot, etc. All this is set in the bright sun, in the open country, by a ditch at the side of the road; the landscape fills the whole canvas.
–Gustave Courbet, letter to Francis Wey, 1849
A miner, a forty-niner, hunting the specter that haunted Europe in the days of old, the days of gold. Fine art, fine print, dead letters. Paper trail of altarpiece that is no more, that ceased to be. Quaint technology, the postcard’s 150th jubilee, goddess turned 170, an artist’s 200th anniversary. Library. Museum. Museum library. Wunderkammer, wall-newspaper, weighty tome, trilingual volume, edition: one. One French stamp, one German postcard, two publishing houses. A Tale of Two Countries in 49 tangible tokens. Repetition, reproduction, retrospection, post-production. Post-age, sabot-age, wreck-age. Truths writ in stone, broken to gravel. If modernism is antiquity what, then, is mid-19th century? Ash heap of his-story, twilight of Idols, trial by fire. Revisionism, archival fetishism, captivating Communism, fascinating ... Self Portrait? Armchair Bolshevik, collector pathologic, middle-age nostalgic. Looking back at the photographs, oh, I could write you paragraphs. Freedom of irrelevance, tightrope of ambivalence, luxury of time, labor of love. Ghost hunters of all countries, dig in!
9 CLINAMEN Ste Trique, lunatique - 4 PALOTIN Ste Susan Calvin, docteur 150 E.P. . Fêtes des Suprême Quartes
NORRØNE PATAFYSISKE INSTITUTT /SANTOLAROSA/CENTRALBANKEN