SHALLOW THEN HALO (2021) -

Room 4: Lisette Ros / Goya
Elements of my works on show.
The Mirror (2019), live performance preview + installation + video work
My Self, the (First) Breath (2021), live performance vernissage + glass installation + video work
Reframing Conventions for INTERBELLUM #1 (2020), video work
I’ll dance as fast as I can (2020), installation + residues + video work
Lisette (2015 – ongoing), polaroid installation
Reframing Conventions (2013), time lapse video + objects.

—

“Behold, I am that which must always overcome itself.”
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche – Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Exhibition shallow then halo The Mirror by Lisette Ros

exhibition shallow then halo My self the first breath and reframing conventions by Lisette Ros and rob schroder

exhibition view shallow then halo room 4 artist Lisette Ros

exhibition view shallow then halo polaroids wall room 4 artist Lisette Ros. Ongoing polaroids by Marieke Gras.

exhibition view shallow then halo room 4 reframing conventions timelapse by artist Lisette Ros and Francesco Goya

exhibition view shallow then halo room 4 i'll dance as fast as I can installation by artist Lisette Ros LR On Demand

exhibition shallow then halo room 4 reframing conventions installation view by artist Lisette Ros and Francesco Goya

The desire to delve beneath the surface is a desire for knowledge and control. It backfires, and we end up besieged: as soon as we reach the inside, we are again confronted with another surface. Inside the grave there is no living soul; what lies buried is only the reminder of its absence.

Obsession is a will to power that always ends up besieged, haunted by its object. It zooms in on a target that, in principle, will escape its lens. If “the dream of reason produces monsters,” as Goya wrote, this lies in the fact the suspect has always already fled the crime scene, even if the culprit is caught red-handed, in flagrante delicto.

It takes some bravery to bring the criminal face to face with the victim—that is, to look into the mirror. At the end of obsession, we embrace the vanity of the world. If there is a world-to-come, surely it must be hell and not only heaven. Maybe perfection itself is the culprit, forever taunting us with ideas about the flaws, defects and decay of this world.

There is nothing as shallow as a surface. It repeats itself incessantly, eternally, and in this repetition all familiar forms become foreign to us. The only escape is the embrace in which I become a foreigner to myself: “Whatever I may create and however I may love it – soon I must oppose it and my love. Thus my will wills it.”

Baby, I can see your halo.

Mari van Stokkum and Errol Boon in conversation with Gabriel Rolt