SPRING/Break art show

FEATURING WORK BY LISE ELLINGSEN
Purchase tickets to the fair here.

September 6 - 11, 2023
Collectors Preview: September 6, 11am - 5pm
Opening Night: September 6, 5 - 8pm

BOOTH 1162
625 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10022
COMING SOON: Artsy Online Viewing Room

M.David & Co. is pleased to participate in the SPRING/BREAK art fair with Lise Ellingsen's wild, inventive, and immersive installation Norse Cosmos Claw Game in booth 1162.

Exhibition essay by Paul D’Agostino:

Norwegian artist Lise Ellingsen references Norse mythology, spirituality, pop culture, surrealism, and hedonistic aspects of advertising tropes and multimedia through large-scale installations featuring interactive sculptures and video. In her generally autobiographical works, Ellingsen uses humor to overcome feelings of existential angst and cultural anxiety, and she often utilizes handmade, 3D-scanned, 3D-printed, and animated sculptures with vibrant colors in video and augmented reality applications.

For SPRING/BREAK’s “Wild Card” theme Apocalist, Ellingsen will explore calamity and hysteria with an immersive installation of her interactive Norse Cosmos Claw Game. A dark space will feature sculptures of animals, mushrooms, flowers, and trees placed around the space to evoke a ‘magical forest’ visitors can navigate. This will be a mythical realm of folklore. In the middle of this space, suspended from the ceiling, will be a large mechanical claw modeled after arcade machines found in game rooms and commercial outlets. Hanging in the grasp of this claw will be a sculpture of a cow—a reimagined Norse deity, Aðumbla, associated with the creation of the cosmos.

Beneath the large claw holding Aðumbla, in the middle of the ‘magical forest,’ will be Ellingsen’s standard-size version of the arcade claw game. By entering the room, visitors become immersed in a life-sized claw game. They enter a space of myth and magic, sacredness and desecration, chance and mystery, and they ‘gamble’ with such ideas by interacting with the actual claw game within the room. Instead of cute stuffed animals or toys, Ellingsen’s claw game is filled with 3D-printed miniature figurines of Norse mythology, mirroring the large-scale sculptures in the installation. Each figurine is imprinted with a barcode for smartphone captures, leading viewers to 3D animations of characters in augmented reality and video. As visitors play this game, they gamble with fate and spirituality. The atmosphere of distraction and entrancement will be enhanced by fluorescent lights, audio applause, arcade music, and self-reflective video projection. Players will be mesmerized by the spectacle while engaging in a game of randomness and chance.

Themes of End Times, apocalypse, chaos, and dystopia are implied as visitors engage with Ellingsen’s Norse Cosmos Claw Game. As they navigate and play, their links to the natural world of animals and forests, and to the metaphysical world of myth and spirituality, are literally ‘hanging in the balance.’ All the sculptures in Ellingsen’s version of the claw game are grotesquely reimagined creatures reflecting a mashup of Norse mythology and commercial pop culture. Some of the sculptures—such as the cow Aðumbla and the eight-legged beast representing Odin’s horse—are made in the shape of the artist’s bull terrier, Isis. Another important sculpture among these is the Odin-Snake, inspired by engravings from the Oseberg Viking ship. By grabbing at ‘sacred’ animals with a claw in hopes of ‘winning’ toy trophies, players treat these deities as pieces in a game—matters of competition and entertainment. Players thus gamble with fate, risking the consequences of desecration.

This desecration is also a commentary of how we treat ourselves and others in today’s competitive, hyper-mediated world, and how we mistreat nature and animals for profit and consumption. Norse Cosmos Claw Game reflects how we treat animals with disrespect by containing them, plucking them up at will, and moving them around with actual claws, hoisting them into assembly lines for consumption. For Ellingsen, this mistreatment is reflective of the lacking respect we have for nature in general, and for ourselves and others. If we are supposed to be the stewards of our planet, of nature, of ourselves, and of the things we hold sacred, we’re not doing a good job of it. We do it irresponsibly by turning it into a capitalistic game. Our self-proclaimed right to exploit nature has grave consequences that put our own survival at risk.  

Another feature of Norse Cosmos Claw Game also uses dark humor to reflect on aspects of narcissism, self-destruction, and madness. For this, Ellingsen introduces a sculptural icon of one of Odin’s ravens, Hugin, outfitted with a surveillance camera in one of its eyes. It will be a ‘bird’s eye’ view of most of the room, and the video it captures will be simultaneously projected large on a wall. Visitors will be inside a game while playing a game, all the while watching themselves being observed—by one of the mythological characters in the game itself. Odin’s ravens were worshiped by Vikings, as they conveyed knowledge about the present, past, and future. Here, Hugin’s surveillance feed reflects our obsessions with reality shows and selfie culture.  

Born in Oslo, Norway, Lise Ellingsen moved to New York City to earn a BFA at School of Visual Arts in Graphic Design. After a number of years working in advertising, she received her MFA in Visual Arts from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Ellingsen’s work is focused on the female position with relation to nature, and on the spirituality of nature and animals. She uses humor as a means to express the existential angst she experiences in western culture, a culture where she believes the detachment and destruction of nature is an existential threat. Ellingsen expresses a strong search for meaning through sculpture, drawing, animation, and video performance. In recent projects, she features ethereal imagery from Norway to reflect her take on commercial and pop culture through her Norwegian heritage, stretching back to the Viking Age, when Norse Mythology flourished.

In 2023, Ellingsen had two solo shows of immersive installations in Chashama Gallery Space and Trygve Lie Gallery in Manhattan. In 2022, she had work in an international virtual solo show with the Arts To Hearts Project, and she showed work in group show venues such as the Scandinavia House Gallery, Prince Street Gallery, and NYC Crit Club’s D9. Ellingsen has attended art residencies at the Small Projects Art Residency in Norway, the Fine Art Work Center Print Studio, the Michael David Artist Residency in the US, and RUC Residency in Italy. She is the founder of “Artists for Animals,” a series of global exhibitions where artists donate work to fundraise for animals in need. Elingsen’s work has been published globally in magazines such as Nylon Japan and Elle Singapore.