Domo Baal is delighted to present Sharon Kivland's
first solo exhibition in London since 2002.
Sharon Kivland investigates how our lives are governed
by systems of order that complement, overlap and contradict one
other while undergoing continual periods of change. Spheres such
as language, time, philosophy, politics, nature and history are
involved. The focus of this approach is represented by the identity
of a woman and her body. The site where sense is made of it all
is palpable in the titles of the work as the presence of an individual
speaker, in the possessive pronoun 'mes'. The viewer encounters
a private lexicon, whose poetic basso continuo is modulated by the
rich philosophical background that shimmers through allusively.
Mes Fils, from which the exhibition takes its title, includes a
continuing series of photographs, each showing the same woman in
an embrace with a different man. Closer inspection reveals that
the woman is much older than her partner, old enough, in fact, to
be his mother. The work engages with the Oedipus complex and its
resolution in prohibition, when the son must renounce his desire
for his mother. The way in which each child navigates his passage
through the Oedipal relation will determine both his assumption
of a sexual position and his choice of sexual object. For the analyst
Jacques Lacan, it is a passage to the symbolic, one that passes
through a complex sexual dialectic. Here no father intervenes, however,
to impose his law and to separate mother from child. The scandal
is evident, and there is a further underlying transgression in the
work. As the series continues, the woman - the artist - gets older
while the men (all former students of Kivland)
remain the same age. They are, however, completely interchangeable,
while she is constant and singular. In the same series are several
oth
er works that also take up the themes of prohibition and transgression
in an atmosphere of elegant refinement.
Sharon Kivland last exhibited at domoBaal in March
2003 in A Reader (publication, domoBaal editions). Recent solo shows
include L'Autre Corps Bugdahn & Kaimer, Düsseldorf, Germany
(July 2003), flair at The Bartlett School of Architecture (publication,
domoBaal editions), University College London, Cela aura déjà
eu lieu (November 2004) Château de Morsang-sur-Orge, France
(November 2004). Nature and Nation a national touring exhibition
curated by Eggebert-and-Gould for the Hastings Museum and Art Gallery
and touring (catalogue). She is editor of Transmission: Speaking
and Listening, a new publication series, now in its 3rd year, published
by Site Gallery and Sheffield Hallam University, and co-editor of
Transmission: The Rules of Engagement, Artworks Publishing, London.
Sharon Kivland is also exhibiting currently in
Diderot, curated by David Bate at Danielle Arnaud.
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