Underskog

Today has gone on forever by Jon E. Kopperud og Saman Kamyab

Galleri Knekt

Bjerregårds gt. 51 Oslo

Thursday at 8:00pm – Friday at 1:00am

“The difference between a bad artist and a good one is: the bad artist seems to copy a great deal, the good one really does,” Lucy tells Janice. “But who cares about good or bad. I beg to differ,” Janice answers. “Anyway you´re not even close to hitting bull’s eye …If a thing loves, it is infinite.” Lucy is putting on her pajamas. Her eyes are doomstruck. Pale face from long winter. She lifts her camera from the shelf and points it towards an object on a shelf. This crystal sculpture of a panther embracing a hippo. “You’re my light. My guide.” Janice turns her gaze towards her artist friend. “Talking to me?” she asks Lucy. “I´m not seeing anyone else here.” She takes a pause. Sighs. “But you´re right to question. I was talking to myself.” Oh, my soul, let me be in you now. Look out through my eyes, look out at the things you’ve made. All things shining. Fragments of thoughts wending through her mind like a voyage. At the end of the hallway there is a photograph shining inside a frame which glass reflects the clean space they´re in. When space clean dirty thoughts are easy to embrace. To fill the gap. “Fill me in Lucy please.” Janice puts a hand on her naked shoulder. “Can I talk to you with complete honesty?” There was a moment, when Lucy used to blame everything and everyone for all the pain and suffering and vile things that happened to her, that she saw happen to her people. Used to blame everybody. Blamed normal people, blamed society, blamed God. She didn’t get no answers cause she was asking the wrong questions. “I can not.” Janice lifts a cup of milk from the table. An inscription on the cup. The inscription says: “Beauty is worse than wine.” Lucy turns her head. Their faces are in spitting distance. The photograph at the end of the hallway is of a cat playing with a piece of yarn. A pragmatic dream. "You should know the truth,” Lucy suddenly says. “The truth will make me mad.” Janice answers. “Nobody’s perfect. There was never a perfect person around.” This makes Lucy smile. She´s a broken cup. “Give him a flower, he’d keep it forever.” Lucy tells Janice. Janice blinks. “Him?” Depiction is more than mapping. “You´re a boy now son.” Janice burps. “What will you do now?” Lucy answers. Blue everything is blue! But the retina keeps neutralizing it.. “I think I will become a monk and devote my entire life to prayer and good works.” Janice answers. “No.” Says Lucy. “I mean, what will you do today?” Janice scratches her balls. “Ah! Today I’ll get drunk and go whoring.” Lucy smirks the way you do when only minutes left. “The guy writing us will soon stop. He needs to take a shit, go down to an independent gallery space to help a friend mount some pieces. Then he´ll start cutting this movie he made and he´ll go to sleep. Tomorrow we´ll be gone.” Janice starts crying. “How can we keep on living?” The cup is gone, the cat with the yarn is gone, the inscription faded, their clothes are gone. They are naked. Now their skin turns transparent. I enter the room. I say nothing. They look at me. I made them. They are shallow. Fading. Fading. Fading. I smile the smile of a child-like man, with no conventions, not entrapped in a cocoon. Giving my self a chance to develop further. “Words…You don´t want to be words. Be silence. After silence there is music.” Be music. They disappear completely. They are gone now. They never existed. They are death. An unfounded rumor. Just because they´re in print doesn’t mean they´re a gospel. Janice and Lucy. Alice and Gertrude. Dino and Bruno. Comedy and remembrance. Tilt the shift and the moose starts sneezing. Honey. An enormous and horrible hurricane violated the countryside.

Kristian Skylstad