oᴛhᴇr | silasinoue.com

Wash, 2023, new and used car and motorcycle parts, e-waste, wires, plastic pipes, silicone, oak wood, smoked oak wood, bronze, filter, concrete, glass, acrylic, sugar, oil, mold, plants, water, mist- maker, 140 × 760 × 560 cm (variable measures), (photo:Jacob Friis-Holm Nielsen)

An indeterminate creature is taking a bath in a huge oak tub. Its body is made up of plastic hoses and tailpipes, both new and used, from cars and motorbikes. A motion sensor activates a fog machine in the creature’s belly, causing the pipes to expel a white haze. When the haze fills the room and settles on the surface of the water, it creates a steamy, spa-like ambience, while also evoking a mysterious kind of air pollution. On the edge of the tub there is a selection of plants that add to the feeling of luxury and wellness, accompanied by little sculptures depicting figures that frequently crop up in Inoue’s works. On the one hand, the creature in the tub can be viewed as the offspring of the world’s fossil industries, equipped with its own self-willed agency, and an implicitly flamboyant self-image, which it nurtures in the tub as if in a process of greenwashing. On the other hand, we might say that the creature is undergoing a kind of purification or rebirth, in which it will manage to get rid of the fossil fuels that created it.

.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Scewer, 2022, 'Lower Lifeforms'. Horsens Art Museum, (photo:Jacob Friis-Holm Nielsen)

Scewer, 2022, 'Lower Lifeforms'. Horsens Art Museum, (photo:Jacob Friis-Holm Nielsen)

-Sugar-glazed jellyfish

Burnt acrylic plastic, sugar, silicone.

-Wolf's head with burrs

Flamingo, felt, mud, and burrs.

-Isomalt-glazed chrysalis

Flamingo, rice, Isomalt, and film

-Gingerbread temple with seaweed

Oak, MDF, gingerbread, roasted seaweed, isomalt, Kompeitou

-Chip of melted microplastic with a sprinkle of salt crystals

Melted plastic, salt crystals

-Fat bat

Flamingo, vegetarian fat with garlic and flavor enhancers

Steel spear with stainless steel feet in a wooden tub with 220 liters of used McDonald's cooking oil.

re:prʘductiʘn - Køgevej 5 - Museum of Contemporary art, Roskilde, 2021

re:prʘductiʘn looks into natural processes, like sex, reproduction and symbiosis, from both a human and non-human perspective.

On the roof of an old cooling tower, a neon sign with bright colors signifies that the building has been given a new life. The sign is inspired by various species of lichen – a composite organism made up of fungi living in a symbiotic relationship with algae.

The discovery of how lichen is composed of both mushroom and algae (Simon Schwendener 1867) led to the term symbiosis (Albert Frank 1877).

While algae draw energy from sunlight (photosynthesis), mushroom feeds on other organisms (living or dead), and is taxonomically more comparable to animals than plants. With lichen covering 7-8 % of the planet’s surface, it’s a most common and evident example of symbiosis between species of radical different natures.

The neon sign atop of the building attempts to give these exemplary organisms attention, at the same time it alludes to sex shops and advertisements found in major cities.

The inside of the cooling tower can be viewed through peepholes in the walls. In there, wooden sculptures, depicting overgrown amphibians, dwell in the mud. Like the building itself, the sculptures are being eaten by organisms transforming dead material into new growth. Different species of fungi grow out of the sculptures. The fungi are kept damp by steam, billowing from a plateau in the middle of the room. On top of the plateau lies a flower made of sugar and isomalt. Like the stamens of real flowers, the sculpture attracts various insects, but in contrast to the pollination, which typically takes place between flowers and bees, the sculpture makes no contribution to reproduction in nature. On the contrary, it acts as a kind of false nectar, that robs nature’s real flowers of the possibility of being pollinated, since the insects will be more attracted to the artificial sugar flower.

During the exhibition period, re:prʘductiʘn will become a breeding ground for non-human life forms and human fantasies alike.

–

re:prʘductiʘn is supportet by the Danish Arts Foundation.

re:prʘductiʘn is part of the group show ‘Bubbles – an art route through the city’, with studio collective 51cth, organized by Museum of Contemporary Art, Roskilde

System, 2023, bioconcrete on steel structure, 209H x 95W x 150D - Reset Materials - Towards Sustainable Architecture, Copenhagen Contemporary

Can non-human nature help us imagine different ways of building and dwelling in a decarbonized world? The work titled System seeks to bring to our attention a different ecological imaginary concerning our architectural and build environment. It suggests a more-than-human ecology of cross-species solidarity, inspiration and care as one way of freeing ourselves from the material base and ideological constraints of our current fossil fuel infused reality.

System both embodies a new process of production and shows an architectural vision inspired by nonhuman nature. It is made of biocement, a building material manufactured by using the natural biomineralization process occurring in nature, where the metabolism between an organism and its environment creates rock-formations and shells. The motif depicts what looks like a snail shell, itself an example of these biomineralization processes, with branches or roots growing out of it. The shape seems to resemble that of a human figure and its nervous system thereby highlighting the common “subterranean” reality of different organic systems, roots and nerves. At an even deeper level, the fact that the motif is made in biocement gives the impression that the motif itself were a product of the process of fossilization, a form arrested in time that implies deeper geological forces at play.

From this point of view, System pulls our imagination towards a perception of different time scales and an eerie feeling presents itself; the fossil-like structure and the human-like image reminds us that by the continued burning of fossil fuels we humans are becoming fossils-in-the-making ourselves. The fossils of the past haunts us as an image of our own future. At the same time, the artwork imagines an alternative future, which flows directly from the material reality of biocement and the promise of a differently sustained world based on ecologically sound building materials. System’s use and depiction of the process of biomineralization contains within it a concrete utopian reality: a space opens up for re-imagining the necessary connection between products and processes of mineralization and organic growth and biological life. It envisions the condition of possibility of a new way of dwelling and inhabiting the earth, where architecture and our build environment will base itself on similar mineralization processes and where people will inhabit “shell”-like houses with organically behaving structures constructed by microbes and other biological entities. Ways of dwelling that will be more conducive over time for human and non-human lifeforms.

Text; Martin Karlsson Pedersen, June 2023

System has been made in collaboration with BioMason and 3XN GXN, and has been support by Dreyers Fond

steel structure is made with help from jdcign

BioMason microbial casting process