Make Out, Make Through
ERIK THÖRNQVIST
Konsthallen
Kulturens hus Luleå
16 Nov 2024 - 2 Feb 2025
Text by Tal Gilad in collaboration
with Erik Thörnqvist
“When I was 18, I was cycling home in the middle of the night from MakeOut.
It was the only gay bar in the Arctic hemisphere at the time, and I could see
the iron furnace in the Luleå sky where the fumes would colour it yellow.
People from northern Finland, Tromsö-Norway or Wilhelmina-Sweden,
would drive for six hours to party there.
The little Greek restaurant (now a pizza kebab place) would turn every month into this epic queer club.”
Erik Thörnqvist, From an interview with Kristian Vistrup Madsen for New Era Magazine.
The only way out is through (Robert Frost)- a known expression one uses when faced with a difficult situation- it is best to deal with the hardship and come through the other side.
Make Out in Luleå was the only gay club in Northern Sweden during 2006-2016.
It was active monthly until the founder, Sophie Gunnarsson, moved to Stockholm almost a
decade ago. The neon sign Make Out is located outside- not far from the Konsthall -
and is an artwork/sign that celebrates the culture and legacy of this institution.
In collaboration with Gunnarsson -The club will reopen for one night only on the vernissage!
Make-out (besides kissing and holding a person sexually -according to Cambridge Dictionary) means to find or grasp the meaning of something but also to succeed.
Make, subjectively, is the verb for creation in association with art.
Making it out or through indicates surviving an event (or a place).
There is a work by American artist- Brigid Berlin in which she asked various male artists and
personalities to draw their penises - that resulted in her infamous Cock Book.
Some famous people were there, including Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Basquiat,Leonard Cohen, Victor Hugo, and Andy Warhol (unsigned).
Think of a Chair is a collection of doodles of a hypothetical chair drawn by Erik’s friends
and colleagues among them- Elis Bureau, Malin Norberg, Albin Hillerström, Pål Rodenius,
Ken Zhao, Anja and Tomas Örn, Josse Thuresson, and Karin Keisu. The many drawings act as
visual research, aside from his ongoing deep interest in the chair object that began a series
of standing humanised sculptures. During the exhibition, you, the guests, are welcome to add to the collection. Kulturens Hus’ pedagogues will hold workshops with schools and groups during the exhibition period so the research will continue to grow.
The Library of Mutual Commons started with eight books1 that the artist, Erik had in
common with his partner Björn. The two realised they had some double copies when they moved in together. The books make one think these might be essential reads for their generation, orientation and gender and made the artist reflect on our time when conservatives have a restrictive and oppressive idea of what a home is.
Through Kulturens Hus’s open call, this collection is developing.
This work is a starting point and an invitation for members of the LGBTQIA+ community to donate their surplus books from their homes. The ongoing accumulation will create a collection that will be donated to the Luleå library and available to the local queer/curious reader. This work joins a long tradition of artworks - including Books by Lisa Tan that
include the same books of two lovers in the art world and use the photographic medium.
Also, The Library of Unborrowed Books by Meric Algun is an inspiration.
Perhaps classic or cliché - judging every book by its cover.
Can the spines already compose some hidden meaning?
What poem do we write in our minds?
Hole + Politics of a Hole are part of a series of sculptures that reflect the historic shift toward white tiles in domestic spaces and promote an aesthetic of absolute cleanliness while also hinting at the anonymity of public sex.
These artworks reinterpret the glory hole, integrating it into tile designs with smooth curves that highlight the oppressive aesthetic of Folkhemmet.
Hole- A tiled piece in ultramarine, white, and burnt umber, resembling enlarged
nanotechnology details in mobile phones. This work comments on the dual nature of today’s technology, capturing intimate moments while invading privacy through surveillance.
Politics of a Hole- is a white-tiled wall version installation that activates the
second space and creates a haul of infinite possibilities.
Other Dead Giveaways
A flower, a fruit, facial hair, jewellery, a piece of clothing - a ‘tell’ to help the ones with a broken gaydar.
This collection- an array of day-to-day objects, is displayed on custom-made podiums for an eye-level view from the window sill to the main space. All hold symbolic meaning in public/private and historic for LGBTQIA+ individuals as signifier objects that help us to find each other in the shadows. It is what we can today read as queer aesthetics before it got refined and blended into mainstream culture by the 1990s Metrosexuals.
The texts in the labels are fictitious diary entries written with ChatGPT and
edited by AI.
Pose
These blowouts originated from 1980s postcards of 1880s photos by Wilhelm Von Gloeden,
a German photographer who worked mainly in Italy.
They are nudes of men, taken in nature in classic poses and are sexual as they are nudes
and maybe questionable as these are young men. We don’t know the(ir) story.
We only see the posing and gestures they left as a form of queer ephemera.
Their images have been cut out of the frame by the artist - we have an empty void-
an anonymous silhouette- and the pastoral backdrop. Pose echoes a shiny marble
statue of a perfectly proportioned body, showcasing the strong arms product of no
gym but the country life of a poor peasant blessed with a chiselled jawline and
rock-hard abs. Captured In a moment of youth and innocence. A body to desire and admire now dead, long gone and for us to see and walk through with our minds.
Finook
Language sometimes reveals hidden histories, dark, shameful, and unforgivable.
This homophobic slur Finook (Italian) dates to a time when gays were murdered and
burned in abundance in Europe - they used fennel to mask the smell of burning flesh.
Will it be reclaimed to the queer vocabulary?
Turning from a dark meaning to being part of the symbolism of power in knowing what happened isn’t going to be tolerated in our society ever again?
Natural Born Sitter
This sculpture’s genealogy is the series of Standmaschine I and II, and RaumPlanner
but also a much earlier Cartesian Crawler2 (exhibited in this very space in 2020)
A true romance between Standmaschine and Crawler gave birth to a natural-born
sitter.
Inspired by Mies van der Rohe’s 1927 cantilever chair, MR 20 stands for what was
once innovative and now is vintage- it is an ode to forgotten ideas of advancement
tangled with conformism and totalitarianism. At the same time, Sitter is an
almost complete abstraction of a humanised chair- an evolution stepping away from
furniture into the raw metal frame again.
Sun
Aren’t all of us living in the north worshipping the Sun as if it is the one true god?
On a cold day in late autumn, we cross the road to the sunny side, face the light, close our eyes, pause and smile. Sun was created out of a formalistic fascination with the visual signifier of the massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma.
The 18th-century coin-inspired sun cog piece’s appearance suggests a futuristic fantasy of neo-paganism being only associated with the will to reunite humanity and not to create divisions in society as it predates organised religions.
What is queer culture?
Where does the personal intertwine with a collective memory of generation Y/Z?
What is (‘gay’) art if it is not high art? As the majority of the most celebrated classic artists were (according to art history) Homosexual? It may be that queer culture/ gay art contain homoerotic elements, the politics of gay rights, yet itcan also encompass the teachings of our history or the inspiration for the future?
What does being gay mean in the so-called progressive West of today?
Will gay culture erase itself to assimilate into mainstream culture?
Or will there always be a place to be authentic - and what is that?
Are we on the verge of a shift in values? Just like the shift after the Weimar
Republic a hundred years ago?
The archetype of gay/ Coming of age/ Discovering worlds/ Looking from the outside- in.
Make Out Make Through is the personal journey of an artist who is proud to be from
and return to the North.
“Bruno Latour said- We have never been modern. I respond: Can anything ever be queer? In the words of José Esteban Muñoz- Queerness is not a static presence but a force constantly moving between the past and the future. It is a desire to transcend the current while simultaneously saying this world is insufficient- something is missing, an utmost desire that guides me forward so I can envision another world.”
From Erik Thörnqvist’s artist statement
List of art works:
1. Other Dead Giveaways (2024)
Plaster pineapple, Navy handkerchief,
silver earring, faux mustache, plastic
green carnations, metal funnel, striped
tube socks, Oscar Wilde Green, MDF
Dimension variable
2. Library of Mutual Commons (2024)
Books, bookshelf
Dimensions variable
3. Hole (2024)
MDF, PLA, acrylics, lacquer, grout
160 x 40 x 12 cm
4. Finook (2023)
Plaster, acrylics, lacquer
15 x 10 x 10 cm
5. Natural Born Sitter II (2024)
Stainless steel, scaffolds, jesmonite
210 x 60 x 55 cm
6. Pose I, II, III (2024)
OSB, wood, paper
2,4 x 1,2 m
7. Sun (2024)
PLA, natural plaster
70 x 70 x 1,5 cm
8. Make Out Posters 2006-2016
Dimension variable
9. Politics of a Hole (2024)
Ceramic tiles, grout, plastic diamonds,
PLA, acrylics, lacquer
Dimensions variable
10. Think of a Chair (2024)
Paper,
Dimension variable
11. Make Out (2024)
Neon sign
120 x 15 cm
(Smedjegatan 4)
Artistic team:
Artistic director: Karin Erixon
Curator of public art: Hans Sundvall
External writer/curator: Tal Gilad
Collection curator: Charlotta Rosengren
Pedagogue: Carole Creedon
Pedagogue: Adam Wallenberg
Technician: Frans Sandberg
Technician: Joachim Lundström Thunderlin
Technician: Stina Engman
Thanks to:
Sophie Gunnarsson, Björn Elgerd, Cecilia
Thörnqvist, Jonas Thönrqvist, Conny
Karlsson Lundgren, Tove Möller, Mariana
Vnuk, Sophie Vukovic, Philip Dufva,
Johanna Gustafsson Fürst, Anja och Tomas
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