Henrik Olesen

24 May - 26 October 2024
Thursday - Saturday, 12.00 - 6.00pm

Please scroll down for installation views

C A B I N E T
132 Tyers Street
London SE11 5HS
art@cabinet.uk.com
www.cabinet.uk.com

“Henrik

Installation view, Henrik Olesen, Cabinet London, 24 May - 26 October 2024
“Henrik

when this took place
it was the rise of dawn
And everything was
transfigured

NIGHT

“Henrik

71.5x66cm 2024
oil paint and acrylic paint on hardboard, papermache, acrylic gel medium, tape, mounted on wooden subframe
“Henrik

91x68cm 2024
oil paint and acrylic paint on MDF, papermache, tape, industry marker, mounted on wooden subframe
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50x40cm 2024
oil paint and acrylic paint on plywood, papermache, Lacquer, painting butter, tape, mounted on wooden subframe
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83x62cm 2024
oil paint and acrylic paint on hardboard, various acrylic gel mediums, tape, mounted on wooden subframe
“Henrik

Installation view, Henrik Olesen, Cabinet London, 24 May - 26 October 2024
“Henrik

The earliest Crocodilian, circa 95 Million years ago, 2024
crocodile: plaster, wood, metal, rabbit wire, jute, acrylic paint, UV varnish
30x250x90cm
plinth: MDF, acrylic paint, plastic,metal
84x250x150cm
“Henrik

Crocodile Deconstruction 2024
crocodile: plaster, wood, metal, rabbit wire, jute, acrylic paint, uv varnish
35x235x85cm
plinth: MDF, wood, acrylic paint
44x250x150cm
“Henrik

Installation view, Henrik Olesen, Cabinet London, 24 May - 26 October 2024
“Henrik

DAY

6 abstractions from the dawn of time

“Henrik

77x52cm 2024 oil paint and acrylic paint on MDF, painting butter, tape, Edding Industry marker, mounted on wooden subframe
“Henrik

83x71cm 2024 oil paint and acrylic paint on hardboard, acrylic gel medium, tape, permanent marker, mounted on wodden frame
“Henrik

50x40cm 2024 oil paint and acrylic paint on plywood, various acrylic gel mediums, tape, permanent marker, mounted on wooden subframe
“Henrik

50x40cm 2024 acrylic paint and spray paint on canvas, papermache, tape
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73.5x58.6cm 2024 oil paint and acrylic paint on hardboard, tape, permanent marker, mounted on wooden subframe
“Henrik

77x52.5cm 2024 oil paint and acrylic paint on hardboard, mounted on wooden frame
“Henrik

Inspired by the Crocodile Mummies, circa 2.500 years ago. (Found at a tomb at Qubbat al-Hawa, Egypt, in 2019). 2024
crocodile: 2 parts, modelling mortar, wood, rabbit wire, metal, jute, acrylic paint, cotton, EVA glue, inkjet on transparent film, painted produce can
93x50cmx37cm / 21x67x22cm
plinth: MDF, wood, acrylic paint, modeling mortar
56.5cmx120cmx55cm

“Henrik

Crocodile (post-war Art Brut landscape) 2024
crocodile: papier-mâché, wood, rabbit wire, acrylic paint, uv varnish, 15 painted produce packages
23x190x70cm
plinth: cardboard, MDF, acrylic paint
36x250x150cm
“Henrik

Henrik Olesen

30 November – 27 January 2017

What about bodies that don’t matter? Or, bodies that do matter as a means but not ‘as an end’, that is, as a Subject. These are bodies that don’t own themselves, aren’t allowed to name themselves, regulated objects who are assigned their being only through that being’s violent effacement, through its denial. Can these bodies that don’t matter even be represented, self-represented, at least? If so, could they, as a kind of nothing, as a negation, even matter to themselves or to each other as a group? If you had to choose but couldn’t choose both would you rather have a body or be a self? The former might ask: how do I make myself a body, whilst the latter would say: how do I become a self? These questions assume a sense of agency or autonomy to do and to be, to have a kind of voluntaristic entry into systems of (re)production. But what kind of non-matter is a negative body anyway? Is it more than derelict viscera? Unemployed negativity? Or vacant possession? We can talk about fixed bodies (like fixed capital or machines) and possible bodies (like variable capital or workers’ bodies), and we can talk about subjectified bodies, racialized, gendered, and queer bodies, or national bodies, bodies-without-organs, paranoid bodies, drugged bodies, family bodies, disorganised bodies, computer bodies (Turing’s hetero/homo binary machines), servant bodies and post-human bodies. How to deal with them? A machinic body could be thought of as the consequence of a tool body, largely superseding it, wherein a body’s relation to the object is based upon technique or artisanship directed toward a single aim and singular, as opposed to a machinic body that could be thought of as compartmentalised yet systematic, part of a greater unity (a factory): this division would be called something like formal and real subsumption, respectively, of bodies under the processes of capital, its imposition of the wage relation to produce surplus value in order to accumulate more of itself through the market, to persist as a mode of production, a totality of social relations. Or enslavement and subjection, respectively, now in one body. But do machinic bodies always produce value? What about unproductive bodies or surplus bodies that can’t reproduce themselves at all?

Henrik Olesen

Produce (Sidolin) 2012

Produce on perspex

150 x 200 cm