BGE Contemporary is delighted to present “Bortenfor – Or: Outside the Verge of Liminal Spaces”, a solo exhibition by Fredrik Raddum. The exhibition consists of sculptures in brass, bronze, painted bronze, stainless steel, plastic and wood.
Familiar in “Bortenfor – Or: Outside the Verge of Liminal Spaces” are Raddum´s keen eye for humor and the absurd, and his play on subtle social satire. His sculptures resemble art dystopian cartoons, balancing between the tragic and the humorous. However, contrary to his past shows, Raddum approached the creation of this exhibition with an open approach, working on each sculpture as an individual project. This stands in contrast to his past exhibitions, where his works often have centered around political or current humanitarian themes. In “Bortenfor – Or: Outside the Verge of Liminal Spaces” the artist has parted ways with past practices and created a show beyond a specific direction. He aimed to let his works for the show develop separately rather than following a specific theme throughout the exhibition. By doing so, he found himself trapped by the exercise of avoiding past procedures, and caught up in a classic dilemma: banishing all a coherent theme becomes a theme in it self. As insinuated in the title of the show, Raddum describes this practice as a liminal room, where limitations are broken, and extremities emerge in a room where anything goes. With this thought of working with an undefinable space, as seen for example in the work Liminal Slide, Raddum has drawn inspiration from the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, who´s works are often positioned (or not positioned) in transitional lawless spaces. It is this anxious, undefinable space the artist investigates with “Bortenfor – Or: Outside the Verge of Liminal Spaces” a state of transition; a blurred space between undefined spatial areas.
Works such as Crossroad Junction Pine, Boots and Kid directly refer to Blood Meridian, the 1985 epic Western novel by American author Cormac McCarthy. The novel follows a “kid” who gets caught up with a gruesome gang who slaughter Native Americans. Raddum transfers from the novel to his works a desire to work lawlessly and and get trapped in a rough existence.
The exhibition opens Thursday January 10 and runs through February 6, 2019.