Group show: Empedocles’ Ghost. KRÆ syndikatet & Warehouse9 Artists: Naja Ryde Ankarfeldt and Elena Lundquist Ortíz (DK), Michael Carter (US), Jenalee Harmon (US), Alexander Holm (DK), Larry and Debby Kline (US), Sean Noyce (US), Camilla Reyman (DK), Samuel Scharf (US), Katya Usvitsky (US), and Melissa Walter (US) Curated by: Sean Noyce Photo credit: Sean Noyce, Noysky Projects, Signe Vad Year: 2019
Empedocles’ Ghost is a collaboration between artist-run galleries KRÆ syndikatet of Copenhagen and Noysky Projects of Los Angeles. Empedocles’ Ghost is Noysky Projects’ first off-site, international exhibition, which opens at Warehouse9 in Copenhagen.
Scholars have ruminated on the connection between science and spirituality for thousands of years, applying folk pedagogy to explain the complexity of the world. The Greek philosopher Empedocles was one of the first to formalize this concept, stating that the foundation for all matter consisted of earth, wind, fire, and water. Respectively, Buddhist, Egyptian, Babylonian, Hindu, and Chinese scholars also drew connections with the four elements, emphasizing the universal nature of this concept. With the widespread implementation of the scientific method, science and religion separated, leaving folk practices like alchemy and esotericism to decline precipitously. The fallout from this schism has fostered the rise of literalism, pitting the definitive logic of science against the ascribed doctrine of religion. Many of the works in Empedocles’ Ghost reconnect the fields of knowledge with that which is mysterious. Text: Noysky Projects
Artwork: Nymphaea/Åkande Artists: Naja Ankarfeldt & Elena Lundqvist Ortíz
Materials: Drawing, bamboo paper, aquarelle Year: 2019
Growing from a society that sees the human as outside, beyond or above nature, we initiated an exploration of the nature that is closest to us: our own bodies and the space surrounding. By very concretely placing our bodies directly on paper as templates and tracing the outlines of our limbs in different postures.
Through the union and crystallization of our two practices and bodies, a new body emerges, that appears as an inversion of the Vitruvian Man. Rather than reproducing the narrative of anthropocentrism, and the white male human form as the measure of all things, Nymphaeare-figures the human as always entangled with other species. Using this method we want to craft another story of the human. Text: Naja Ankarfeldt & Elena Lundqvist Ortíz