Du er den snilleste svenske jeg kjenner
(You Are the Kindest Swede I Know)
Markus Lantto
Babel visningsrom for kunst
November 13 - 22 2009

The Swedish artist Markus Lantto (b. 1973) lives in the neighbourhood of Babel, at Lademoen. Similarly, the distance between art and the private sphere is not great in his exhibition “Du er den snilleste svenske jeg kjenner”. (“You are the Kindest Swede I Know”)

On one of the gallery walls hangs a set of headphones. If you press play on the discman behind the wall, a recording starts. What we hear is the artist reading his own, relatively rough translation of an English lyric, a lyric which according to the artist has meant a lot to him. However, some time into the recording the declamation is interrupted by the voice of Lantto’s son. He is hungry. Even if the declamation stops, the recording continues. We hear the sounds of the kitchen where the artist butters a slice of bread. After this the declamation continues. An everyday event is thus incorporated into the artist Lannto’s work. This recording is part of the exhibition.

The artist’s relation to the private sphere may also be linked to the title of the exhibition. “You are the Kindest Swede I Know” is a statement that has been uttered directly to the artist. At first the statement appears to be a positive one. But something happens when the artist uses the statement as an exhibition title. So apparently someone thinks Lantto is the kindest Swede he or she knows. As a title, the statement signalizes detachment. It may problematize how little the statement really says about him. On the poster the work titles are organized as a fragmented poem. Here we may read that “If we had been Turks, we would have spoken to you in Turkish”. Evidently, the fact that Lantto is Swedish does not say much about him as an artist. Neither does the adjective “kind”, when you come to think of it. At the exhibition he presents himself as an artist in possession of creative intelligence rather than kind and Swedish.

By means of intricate puns and irony Lantto shows how the content of a certain object differs when it belongs to either the sphere of art or the sphere of everyday life. The quality of the objects as objects of art is linked to the fact that they have previously had another function as part of a particular way of living. A photo of the artist naked to the waist in a grove has served another function earlier on. In the capacity of an exhibited object he presents – along with the title “The grass is green enough, the sperm is fine” – the position and basic characteristic of this man. The cliché “All I worship and adore” is taken from a lyric. Here it is kept in a similar wording but the content changes radically as Lantto offers his materialized interpretation of the sentence: “All I warship and a door”. A poster which has previously served a practical function for an engineer, to Lantto has become mysterious and inexplicably beautiful and it is precisely as such the drawing is presented. Two handles that were acquired to serve a practical purpose may, as aesthetical objects mounted on the gallery wall, function as a metaphor for an impossible task: To lift the wall itself.

Even if the show confronts us with a self-exposing artist, his ideas are still relevant for us too. The muffled thumping from the inside of a cardboard box may objectify the insecurity anybody may experience when “Man vill så mycket”. (“One wants so much”.) In another of Lantto’s works a dialogue is set up between two spotlights which are hesitantly turned on and off. The title “Jeg elsker deg hvis du elsker meg” (“I love you if you love me”) charges the installation with a meaning that most of us may recognize.

Markus Lantto’s works in this exhibition relates to an everyday context. The selection of works, including the titles and juxtapositions, says something about what the artist himself feels, reflects on and observes in his daily life. As an artist Lantto consequently perforates the borders between the spaces of art and his daily life, well aware of the fact that they may never be effaced altogether. He studies what happens when objects are moved across these borders. The artist has at several previous occasions emphasized the aesthetical qualities of articles for everyday use, thereby underlining his exclusive role as a mobile censor in a collective reality. As part of an exhibition, objects or statements from Lantto’s daily life acquire a new significance because they pass from simply being part of his private life to revealing their potential as works of art. The statement “You are the Kindest Swede I Know” works as a focal point, as Markus Lantto on this occasion presents his own preferences, slant gazes and opinions.

Gustav Svihus Borgersen, 12.11.2009
Translated by Birgit Kvamme Lundheim