“A young man, who wishes to retire from the world and live as a hermit in some convenient spot in England, is willing to engage with any nobleman or gentleman who may be desirous of having one. Any letter addressed to S. Lawrence (post paid), to be left at Mr. Otton’s No. 6 Colmer’s Lane, Plymouth, mentioning what gratuity will be given, and all other particulars, will be duly attended.”
– The Courier, advertisement, 11 January 1810.
A critique of art as relying on its optics seems to have a history that includes various degrees of withdrawal as a counter-tactic. What David Grønlykke has been increasingly interested in is perhaps not so much a state of actual withdrawal, but rather its approximation—or, put differently: the more or less contradictory state of a type of withdrawal that remains within the frame of vision.
In particular, David’s recent work has revolved around the phenomenon of ‘ornamental hermits’: a historical practice primarily fashionable in the late 18th century, in which a person would be hired to continuously perform the role of ‘hermit’ while living in a folly structure in a landscaped garden for years—supposedly for the amusement of wealthy aristocrats.
Obviously, there is something quite disturbing in the desire for others to engage in such an endeavour. But equally interesting—and disturbing—is also the effect of an actual body becoming an image: the way in which model, image, and reality seem to collide. Something strangely oxymoronic in its proposition: the image performed being one of withdrawal. The friction of the actual vibrant substance of a living being rendered into a strangely flat image. An unruly dialectic between interior and exterior—content emptied out and performed as its own uncanny approximation.
For a series of exhibitions he did for the P/////AKTPOOL program in 2020-21, David took a similar interest in imagery that was both personal and generic. In particular, these exhibitions grew from an interest in the space for displaying contemporary art and its set time and spatial framework. While the process of exhibition making, usually geared towards a site for visual experience of resolved work, his approach is rather to include the messy vectors: chance, matter and processes that make up a continuum, exceeding a sanctioned space and time of display and considering also its potential future, as commodity or mediated image.
As such, the work comes from an interest in inducing different temporalities – both past and future. The exhibition becomes a device that produces a particular kind of image – an image arguably also resembling the seductive effects and tools of commercial product photography. The cyclorama wall often utilised in commercial photography, in a sense only seems to accentuating what the space is already engaged in producing; an image of an object appearing both ripped from the flow of time and the specifics of space. David is making visible conditions specific to its production, presentation and later circulation. enabling a different modality of seeing, and with that, also the possibility of making visible that which tends to withdraw.
