NEW BALANCE

NEW BALANCE: Spiralling as Preventive Measure
A Response to Ill-invited Recent Criticism on the Occasion of Gering Lavesson’s New Balance, 15th of July 2011.

The Never Ending Story (1984)

There are recurring patterns in life whose meaning remain beyond us or at the horizon of our understanding. Forces and balances in our world manifest themselves in seemingly coincidental effects having no discernible connections. Nevertheless there was clearly a full moon on the opening night of up-and-coming artist Gering Lavesson’s exhibition New Balance at Flute Douce. We could dwell on biological tides and gravitational pulls, but as long as the mood remains cheerful and bright, let’s say a few things about depressions and lows. Speaking in a lower tone of voice but without whispering.

A plinth stands erect, what is spiralling from it? A desperate projection. Next to it a pair of skis in v-brake formation. A pathetic pyramid of neon coloured weights and six soft socks spinning endlessly. Josh Johnson arrived from Greece having punched the bronze card in every morning for a week. Is he from LA? His movements are spiralling and lack a crescendo, outside the progressive murmur of male praise.

The young crowd stands erect in attention like telegraph poles in a swamp. There is an air of generosity over the scene, like one we would expect on the night of the decision to save the last forest from perishing. What stands erect? To stand erect is to leave what is below and behind, get in touch with what is above and in front, in order to come back and take control of the swamp. Depression is a swamp, you spin slower, still trying to erect telegraph poles in the sludge.

“Yet the voice of male praise continues to soar; to be on a high even in the labyrinth of intoxication. As in a weather-forecast the ‘lows’ are consistently identified with what is unpleasant. Sometimes I am up, Sometimes I am down – in the abstract, the abstraction is unquestionably accurate, at least as far as the male organ is concerned.”*

The interior of the space is kept together by monoquoce structures that support and solidify the liquid elements. Johnson’s muscles seem to offer up competition. He moves around the space unsettling relations, now mimicking, now ridiculing the verticality of the striving objects. He assumes the role of the flute and the baguette magique in a world where there is absolutely no sex and people never really die.

by Harry Pousin and Henri Porter

*Male Fantasies Volume 2: Male Bodies: Psychoanalyzing the White Terror (Klaus Theweleit, 1977)
Translated by Erica Carter and Chris Turner