Disobedience, lust and filth

Text by Asrin Haidari, curator

Edith Hammar has been invited to create a monumental drawing across the walls and floor of a new exhibition space at Moderna Museet. Their contrast-rich universe of giant figures is a response to Eisenman’s sculptural representation of frenzied making, in its first presentation at the museum. These engaging works emphasize the body’s ability to channel our fantasies, fears, and desires, employing a playful approach to scale which distorts perspectives – both physical and cultural. Both Hammar and Eisenman’s artistic vision holds a mirror to our world in which different rules and conventions apply.

A mini-retrospective of Nicole Eisenman’s oeuvre

“Maker’s Muck”, a new acquisition to Moderna Museet’s collection, could be described as a mini-retrospective of Nicole Eisenman’s oeuvre, gathering her visual alphabet in condensed form. The “Muck” referred to in the title highlights the importance of detritus to the act of creating. At the centre of the piece is an over-sized figure with a blank face, seated at a potter’s wheel and surrounded by their creations. We are in an artist’s studio. Large hands mould slippery clay that spins endlessly while the radio plays in the background. An idea is materializing.

The many vibrant sculptures that encompass the maker are comprised of many materials including bronze, silicone, wax, and expanding foam. Intriguing art objects sit on podiums and stools, ready to be displayed. Elsewhere are tools and sustenance essential for the artists work; paint tubes and plastic trays, tins of tuna, bread, and a bottle of ketchup. The exhibition’s surrealistic title, “My Eyes Are Like Funnels, My Ass Is a Hand”, alludes to the creative process and brings to mind an image of a person relentlessly absorbing the world in order to subsequently transform it into new shapes, using all their creative and imaginative might.

With a critical lens and a wild sense of humour

Nicole Eisenman is one of today’s most influential contemporary figurative painters and sculptors. Since the 1990s her unique visual language, powerful figuration and playful composition, has been applied to a broad range of topics. Social scenes and portraits are given multiple layers of meaning in their use of allegories to comment on current affairs and American society, from capitalism to patriarchy. Eisenmann’s work asks us to consider what shapes the human condition; relationships and sex, technology and consumption, politics and identity are all treated through her critical lens and wild sense of humour.

Eisenman displays a free and fluid relationship to style and tradition, creating images that bring the present into dialogue with art histories. Her work is rich in associations and references, from the painting of the Baroque and the Renaissance periods to Pop Art and German Expressionism. Self-representation is a motif that runs through her art, reflecting on both the creative act and the conditions that frame artistic life. In this way Eisenman offers a critique on the art world’s infrastructures and all that is necessary to achieve success.

The body as a site of projection for social and political control

Edith Hammar has participated in numerous exhibitions in the Nordics and is represented in Moderna Museet’s collection with three drawings. They have published two graphic novels: “Homo Line” (2021), about homesickness and the borderlands between Swedish, Finnish, and Finland-Swedish culture, and “Portal” (2023) a love story across the eras. Hammar is frequently commissioned to create artwork for album covers, night clubs, and festivals.

For the exhibition at Moderna Museet, Hammar has created their largest drawing to date, made in ink and charcoal. The work, titled “Hot and Slutty Giants”, features people in various everyday situations marked by absurd and sensual elements. The scenes play out where public and more intimate spaces merge, and where pain and pleasure provide relief; hooks piercing the skin, straps pulled tight, nettles that burn. A drawing of a bedroom shows late-night anxiety transformed into an evil creature, while lovely moments by the sea seep into a public bathroom that serves as an arena for erotic encounters.

Hammar’s version of a gargoyle, a grotesque creature often placed on Gothic buildings to divert rainwater, and which is said to protect the site from evil spirits, looks out from one of the room’s top corners. Sculptural elements made of epoxy, wood, and ceramic sometimes emerge out of Hammar’s sharp, black lines. Drops of bodily fluid—sweat and tears—trickle over the skin; a pencil pokes out of a naked butt; pointed nipples push out of the wall.

The ideas for Hammar’s images stem from reflections on how our experiences in different environments and situations are shaped by our identities and power relations—how the body becomes a site of projection for social and political control. By contrast, in their drawings everything is adapted to the needs of their protagonists; the world remade into a place that is more permissive and fun. They describe it as an effort to transform their own personal experiences of hostility, discomfort, and disappointment into an alternative world. Environments that recur are public toilets and bath houses, streetscapes, bars, and private domestic spaces.

Tests our imaginations and pushes boundaries

Though Nicole Eisenman and Edith Hammar hail from different generations and separate geographies, there are interesting overlaps in their work. They both demonstrate the healing and regenerative potential of play and humour. Both Eisenman and Hammar share a distinctive, expressive style that is figurative and an interest in scale shifts. Another parallel is that Eisenman’s early aesthetic drew inspiration from comic book arts. In the early 1990s, at the start of her artistic career, she often painted murals.

In a recent interview with Elephant Magazine, Eisenman says that the best art is always a rebellion; painting for her is a form of “non-violent misbehaviour and creative disobedience that is the opposite of and in opposition to fascism, intolerance, and repression”. Hammar’s practice follows a similar logic, suggesting that the restrictions in a repressive social and political climate brings about an urgent need for subversive and filthy art.

“My Eyes Are Like Funnels, My Ass Is a Hand” presents the act of creation as an exercise that tests our imaginations and pushes boundaries – an invitation to consider how we live our lives and what else might be possible.