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A Danish Curator Approaches Spirituality Through Industry at RAINRAIN

A Danish Curator Approaches Spirituality Through Industry at RAINRAIN

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Installation view “Spiritual World” at RAINRAIN. Straight ahead: Kay Yoon’s #Shells of Probabilities (9#/13),” 2023. On right: Lea Porsager’s “MOOOOOOOO (fake cow),” 2023/2024. Courtesy of the gallery.

“Spiritual World” marks RAINRAIN’s first exhibition within their guest curator programming and their first collaboration with Nymark. Nymark is based in Copenhagen and has served as curator for the space Salon 75 in the city. A nice curatorial element, many of the wall works in “Spiritual World” are roughly the same medium-to-small size creating nice harmony in the airy and large gallery space. At EFA’s residency Summerworks another Danish artist tackles religion, Laurits Malthe Gulløv, who working with the Robert Blackburn Printmaking studios has enlarged images of poeple reflected in water from his grandfather’s photographs of his travels in the Middle East, Syria, Lebanon, and other places within ‘The Holy Land.’ A devout protestant and missionary his grandfather traveled there to gather material for a book: “where people were depicted as savages and the landscape romanticized,” Gulløv explains disapprovingly. It is easy for the Danes who have grown up with a truer separation between church and state than the United States and whose its independence from politics, education, and science and led to more emancipation to take this personal approach to faith which incorporates a distance from the power of its institutions.

Laurits Malthe Gulløv prints at Summerworks EFA. Photographed by the writer.

According to the exhibition statement, the group show “Spiritual World” takes a cue from Alfred Stieglitz’s 1923 photograph of a castrated horse, “Spiritual America” and the 2002 film “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron.” Curator Theodor Nymark explains that everyone in Denmark has seen the film that glorifies the American West, I haven’t but I imagine it’s a little campy, like Nymark’s show, and a little cringe, like his view on traditional religion. Lea Porsager’s work MOOOOOOOO (fake cow) (2023/2024) also comments on taming the animal body and the earth, like Stieglitz and the film, but with more humor. A silkscreen print on faux letter donning black block letters that explain the feeling of eating meat from a cow: “Chew the char-red clit-clover (who ordered that?)” and “Let the spherical cos roam the streets.” Packaged meat I assume. In the window metal letters used to brand cows read MOOOOOO. Kay Yoon’s Shells of Probabilities (9#/13) (2023) comprise of automobile parts installed on the wall to with a small hammer that the viewer can use to tap the metal turning it into a Korean ritual bowl that makes a singing sound. Nymark’s photogravure Pearl Street Station Model is elegantly framed with a magenta-colored passe-partout and depicts Thomas Edison’s first commercial power station in Manhattan’s financial district. It is in agriculture, industry, and the energy sector that the spirit is located.

Theodore Nymark RAINRAIN
Installation view “Spiritual World” at Rainrain. Left: Lara Joy Evans’ “Communication Relic No.03” (2024). Right: Theodore Nymark’s Pearl Street Station Model. Courtesy of the gallery.

Hot in the news this week was Trump’s attempt to get Christians to vote for him at an event organized by the conservative group Turning Point Action in West Palm Beach: “I love you Christians. I’m a Christian. I love you, get out, you gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote,” Trump said. In the United States, democracy and Christianity are deeply intertwined—and often times Christian groups even trump the democratic process. Having won over 15 Supreme court cases, many of them reproductive health and LGBTQ-related, including overturning Roe vs. Wade, the most influential Christian conservative movement’s arm is the Alliance Defending Freedom. Stop turning to scripture, technology is the way to go says American artist Lara Joy Evans’ Communication Relic No.03 (2024) a chromogenic print of a satellite dish. Other artists in Nymark’s show, Joe Bun Keo, Amitai Romm, and Quay Quinn Wolf have within Nymark’s context equally poignant commentaries that shift the focus away from religion as an institution and toward science, or personal interests, which, you know, can be seen as spiritual.

It is clear to me that religion and spirituality is on the rise in the contemporary art world and I appreciate these secular-leaning takes on the topic.

Spiritual World | Organized by Theodor Nymark is open through August 9 at RAINRAIN, 110 Lafayette St #201, New York. 

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