Yngvild Saeter, Trinity (altar XXV), 2022, Courtesy of the Artist
Göteborgs Konsthall, Göteborg, Sweden
The exhibition Burnout presents nine artists who directly or indirectly take the car as their starting point – an object that drowns in political, philosophical, and existential meanings.
In art and popular culture, the car has been a powerful and versatile symbol of both progress and stagnation, freedom, and confinement. Artists have used it as a motif, concept and tool to discuss and portray contemporary issues and conditions.
As is the case in the exhibition Burnout, where the car acts as a starting engine and starting point for discussing both existential and political issues.
Here, multifaceted metaphors for global consumption and the exploitation of natural resources are mixed with personal stories of mental burnout, toxic masculinity, power, desire and rebellion. Through video, installation, sculpture, painting and textiles, the exhibition paints a poetic picture that contains both life and death in an in-depth interrogation of our time, where forces such as creation and destruction come together in a piece of metal with four wheels.
Yngvild Saeter’s tactile, sculpted objects are made using motorcycle parts, metal rivets, chains and pieces of fur. These deeply personal works connect to the artist's involvement in the punk and straight edge movement and a near-death-experience during surgery a couple of years ago. They form strange, highly visual, hybrid shapes that defy categorization and her shield-like wall objects become a kind of urban altarpieces or coats of arms belonging to various subcultural families.
