Produce 4, 2017
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne/New York. photo: JOHNNA ARNOLD

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The screw is usually slave to the screwdriver, which determines where it goes and how it behaves. HENRIK OLESEN loosens that grip and fixes his metal screws onto canvas with thick sticky globs of glue instead. Sexual innuendo aside (although it’s clearly not meant to be put aside), the objects are left naked and only marginally contained, as if they had been released from serving a function within a larger system and allowed to speak for themselves. They are free to be connected to both pain and pleasure.*

Produce 4 (2017) was part of OLESEN solo exhibition The Walk presented at the Wattis Institute in San Francisco from March 16 to May 14, 2017.

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*The Walk press release