The brutality of Magnus Wallin’s work has been toned down and turned inwards, towards the insides of the body. His exhibition Educated, at Galleri Nordenhake, has the coolness of an air-conditioned room; the presence of violence is discreet, half hidden in the decorative.
Whereas computer-animated works such as Exit and Skyline hurled catastrophic arenas of sports and violence against the eyes of the beholder, this time I feel like I’m walking through an empty gymnasium, where only a few pieces of equipment, or relics, remain. The sparsely displayed objects are pleasing to the eye, but unpleasant to think about:
A lampshade that looks like a scalp painted black makes me think of the Holocaust.
A wastebasket on the wall that looks like a human rib cage makes me think of public buildings.
A pair of stirrups or handcuffs, made of verdigris green metal, which hangs on a steel rail, makes me think of gymnastics.
Two shower nozzles with teeth and tongues make me think of the word “nozzle”—and gas chambers.
A silvery trophy on the wall, shaped like a small arm with a large hoof-like hand, makes me think of big game hunting.
A human spine with a small green towel makes me think of autopsies.
Three black eggs in a funnel—an e-collar, meant for dogs with wounds—under an infrared lamp makes me think of breeding.
The finger with the sharp nail that points out of a large, silvery cone makes me think of knives.
Wallin’s room makes for a painful institute. A severe school, where The World Championships in Athletics, fascism, and Foucault’s theories of the disciplined body engage in an uncanny game.
The video projection in the back room (the work that has supplied the title for the exhibition) becomes a pleasantly incomprehensible contrast to the sharply defined objects. Flickering in purple and yellow, a figure dressed in an overall and a funnel, with dangling body-part appliqués, moves around, frying eggs and busying himself with some kind of glowing leaves, which he then puts in books. The frame of his table is the lower part of a live man’s body. Now and then a text containing variations of the phrase “I don’t know what it knows” dashes across the screen. In the margin, words in Latin.
Perhaps this is the missing link between Paul McCarthy and Mat-Tina. Perhaps this is what happens to black eggs when they hatch. Perhaps this is an education that I’ve only just begun.
– Jenny Tunedal
(translated by Niclas Nilsson)
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*Tina Nordström, Swedish TV-chef