Patara Gallery

12 september - 14 october 2020

Tbilisi, Georgia

Curated by Gvantsa Jishkariani

http://pataragallery.com/en/

Drafts of Ecology/Bestial Fantasy

The exhibition Drafts of Ecology/Bestial Fantasy by artist, filmmaker, curator and composer Theodor Nymark revolves around four diagram-like illustrations which depict the grand narrative of the coming film by the artist; The Picturesque Beast. The illustrations consist of manipulated and vectorized imagery, architectural floor-plans (From a passage-grave and a neoclassical Liselund Old Palace, both central architecture of the film), descriptive texts and narrator models.

The primary aspect of the narrator model and the contradictory distinction between the primal and the picturesque is central for the narrative to unfold. As seen in three of the illustrations (Primal, Picturesque, Metamorphosis), the narrator model (appropriated from Carl Jung) depicts a descent from the picturesque to the primal and back as seen in the illustration entitled Drafts Of Ecology. The relation and contradiction between the phenomenological concepts of the primal and picturesque arose from a 19th-century romantic understanding and distancing of nature as a phenomenon, rather than as an inevitable aspect of ecology, evolution and therefore culture. That exact same distancing is relevant today as it follows up to 21st-century thinking and its effect on climate change, industrial production, xenophobia and economic accumulation.

The Metamorphosis depicts both the actual transformation of the character from human to wolf (or picturesque to primal) by the application of a prosthetic nose and the contradicting ecological relations in contemporary materiality. The central materiality of modern technology derives primarily from rare-earth-minerals and alloys which are resources naturally harvested from mines. These resources reflect the ecology of all existing objects as they symbolize the union of an ever-growing distinction between man and nature.

Inspired by thinkers and writers as Timothy Morton (Hyberobjects, Ecology Without Nature), William Gilpin (Forest Scenery), Carl Jung (his concept of the Corascene Dog) and Snorri Sturluson (The Poetic Edda) the narrative explores dialectical relations in aspects of society such as culture and nature, biology and technology, fiction and reality, past and present, dog and wolf, good and bad.

The Primal
500 gsm heavy-duty tarp (PVC) material (fire resistance rating “B1 (self-extinguishing)
150 cm X 100 cm

The Picturesque
500 gsm heavy-duty tarp (PVC) material (fire resistance rating “B1 (self-extinguishing))
150 cm X 100 cm