Peter Geschwind Automatic

Solo exhibition
Mail hall, Färgfabriken

For the past two years, he has been preparing AUTOMATIC, which takes over Färgfabriken’s entire main hall. And AUTOMATIC really fills up the room through a labyrinthic installation, that echoes and reacts on the visitor’s movements in the room. Maybe AUTOMATIC could be resembled to an absurd amusement park, full of whistling and jangling noises – where body and space collide and collaborate. In some cases, even the room itself seems enlarged and contorted through the use of projections and shadowplays, as the physical room clashes with a hallucinatory, virtual world.

The front of the room holds a set of installations made of household objects, construction material and tools activated by the visitor’s movements. Combined, they form a scenography, where, for instance, a concrete blender is transformed into a mad merry-go-round. The visitor’s path through the room is lined with a confusing, increasing and alarming sense of intensity. In the center, one finds the eye of the storm, a dream-like house by the sea, while in the far end of the room, a violent shadowplay of silhouettes and falling objects is taking place.

Peter Geschwind has on previous occasions done similar work, and the method is often a kind of misuse of both material and technique where everyday objects are set in various combinations in order to generate a type of glitch or deadlock. In these works, he adds emphasis to the objects’ form and socio-economical characteristics rather than to their primary functions.

A book and a DVD will be produced in collaboration with Liljevalchs and Bildkonstnärsfonden. The presentation will be held at Fargfabriken this June.

AUTOMATIC continues in a different form at Liljevalchs artspace, starting August 31st, the day after the closing of the exhibition at Fargfabriken. The continuation could in fact be seen as the beginning…