
Elisabeth Westerlund - No Pain No Gain
Sidan uppdaterades: 4 oktober 2024
This autumn’s exhibition presents a new installation by Elisabeth Westerlund.
Memories of the recently-ended Summer Olympics and Paralympics in Paris are filled with moments of excitement and expectation, and countless pictures of athletes exhausted by the competitions. Some triumphant, others disappointed by missing a medal by barely perceptible margins. All the participants gave their utmost and totally depleted their physical resources. In her colourful installation No Pain No Gain, Elisabeth Westerlund visualises this very instant, when the competition is over and the tension subsides.
The new installation, created for Konsthall 16, alludes to both exhausted athletes and the darker side of elite sports, and to the benefits offered by exercise and physical exertion. We are easily beguiled by its strong colours and purely visual aspects, but gradually, as the textiles are identified as sports clothing, our associations may move on to personal experiences, memories of school PE lessons, exercising (too) hard in private or in groups, or the surge of joy after a really good run. All that is left of the vivid garments is a skeleton of seams, and reams of textile suspended from the ceiling and coiled into puddles on the floor.
The work is a metaphor for all kinds of physical or mental exertion. The empty garments represent positions of physical exhaustion, they portray bodies that are over-taxed and drained. And yet, there are positive connotations: how strenuous work and physical activities can repay our efforts and improve our health and wellbeing.
Elisabeth Westerlund raises many questions with her installation: What remains after great effort? Where do we draw the line? When does pleasure become pain? What price am I prepared to pay? Regardless of what we want to achieve in life, it will often hurt in some way – No Pain No Gain.
Elisabeth Westerlund was born 1965 and lives in Stockholm. Project year at the Royal Institute of Art 2005–06, Empire State College, Studio Program, New York 1989–90, Birkagårdens Folkhögskola 1987–89. She has exhibited in Sweden and abroad since 1993. Since 2006 she is represented by Björkholmen Gallery, Stockholm, and in the collections of, among others, Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Malmö Konstmuseum and the Swedish Public Art Agency.
elisabethwesterlund.com
Sidan publicerades: 4 oktober 2024