Mortal Coil

Mortal Coil

Edith Dekyndt, Simon Faithfull, John Gerrard, Agnieszka Kalinowska

September 12 - October 5, 2008

Parker's Box is delighted to present "Mortal Coil", an exhibition of works by four artists from Northern Europe, whose respective practices all include the use of moving images. While none of the participating artists comes from quite as far north as the Danish court where Shakespeare's Hamlet pronounced the famous words of the exhibition title, they all certainly understand that character's obsessions. In the very contemporary choice of techniques and images made by these artists, there is a significant grain of Hamlet's preoccupation with the fragile spiral of existence.

In 16th Century English, the word "coyle", in referring to the continuum of life's bustle, already had the connotation of repetitious action, and perhaps also already suggested the spiraling form that has become its primary definition in modern language. Contemporary art spectators may have become accustomed to viewing video works as a loop, but the relation of each of the exhibiting artists to repetition manifests itself in particularly contrasting ways, while always accentuating and heightening the effect of the images they use.

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