#412 Turned Table - Pound

This work was produced during the participatory art project "TABLES Pound" at the opening of my exhibition Pace&Pound at Buer Gallery, Oslo. Participants were asked to pound the fist in the wet filler on the panel mounted with legs, like a table. Some pounded with great force, others more hesitantly. During the exhibition period, the table became sculptural documentation of the event, and afterwards, I disassembled the legs and finished the work in my studio.

TABLES is a triparted art project. First, it is a participatory art event where I invite the public to do a mark or imprint in the wet filler inside a frame with legs attached, placed on the floor like a table. The table functions as a kind of recording device documenting any movement transcending its surface. Second, I exhibit the table and its surface-document of the event as it is. Finally, the legs are detached, I finish the work, tilt it, and turn it into a painting with the title Turned Table.

This work is also part of the Pound series. It consists of works with impressions from pounding the wet filler with my fists. Pounding can be a way to process and shape a physical material. The expression "to pound the table" means to assert one's opinion or to protest against transgressed or threatened boundaries. This points to a convergence between artistic production and political activism, to insist on attempting to bluntly shape a (reluctant) reality according to one's will.

And it is part of Res Ipsa, a compilation of works made by some action shaping the filler once it is prepared inside the frame. The works thus function as a recording device and give testimony about the event while the filler was still wet.

Res Ipsa is Latin for "the thing itself" and is part of the juridical term "Res ipsa loquitur" (the thing speaks for itself), used when an injury or accident in itself clearly shows who is responsible, such as an instrument left inside a body after surgery.