‘Sometimes, waking, I forget where I am’, I imagine Felix telling me over the phone. ‘I am glad to know what I am worth, as everyday raptures. My collected customs like words begin to form a certain vocabulary, cliffs for another life. I bring them together as if to measure the value of everything. The tide rises, the tide falls. I hear the globe spinning, you landlocked in the hoof of the earth, me loosed from it, expelled, often arriving at heaviness. Sometimes, waking, I forget where I am, but out of the airy treasure, a sound opens sound, a place opens another place, and I can see again–miles of arteries, cavernous cities, words through sea salt–and my pseudonym begins again. Every day, I depend on a small seizure from the body I spent, to document the world by documenting myself–the dissonance traveller.’
From a Body I Spent is the first solo show by Russian-born, Toronto-based artist Felix Kalmenson in the Baltics. It is a survey of video works from 2012 to today, and sculptures created on-site with collected materials from the city. Kalmenson’s work variably narrates the liminal space of a researcher’s and artist’s encounter with landscape and archive. By bearing witness to everyday life, and hardening the more fragile vestiges of private and collective histories through their work, Kalmenson gives themself away to the cadence of a poem, always in flux. From Birobidzhan, Cornwall, Kuala Lipis, Toronto, Vilnius, Riga, Moscow, St Petersburg, Singapore, and elsewhere, Kalmenson looks onto the world, and traces the inconspicuous histories that follow his gaze.
Felix Kalmenson is a ‘rootless cosmopolitan’ whose practice navigates installation, video and performance. Kalmenson’s work variably narrates the liminal space of a researcher’s and artist’s encounter with landscape and archive. By bearing witness to everyday life, and hardening the more fragile vestiges of private and collective histories through their work, Kalmenson gives themselves away to the cadence of a poem, always in flux. Kalmenson has exhibited internationally with an upcoming exhibition with longtime collaborator Rouzbeh Akhbari at Hay Art Cultural Center, Yerevan in May 2018. https://www.felixkalmenson.com
Maya Tounta is a writer, curator and occasional video-maker based in Athens and Vilnius. Her work deals with the psychology of play, various kinds of psychotherapy, and ritual practices. In the past year, she has worked very closely with the artist Otobong Nkanga towards the realisation of the work Carved to Flow (documenta 14, Athens, Greece/ Kassel, Germany), and written exhibition texts for solo presentations including The End Of The Story by Maria Toumazou (Neoterismoi Toumazou, Nicosia, Cyprus) and Big Naturals by Jude Crilly (Fillet Gallery, London, UK). In the past year, she also hosted events with CAConrad, Jennifer Teets, Lorenzo Cirrincione, Iris Touliatou, Fernando Garcia-Dory, Marina Vishmidt, Nina Power, Travis Jeppesen and Florian Cramer, among others. Previously (2014-2016) she was a curator at Rupert (Vilnius) where she worked with the residency, alternative education, and public programmes. She holds a Joint Masters in History of Art and Philosophy from the University of St Andrews, Scotland, and is the editor of A Solid Injury to the Knees (2016, Rupert), a collection of essays exploring political depression. http://www.mayatounta.com
From a Body I Spent
Felix Kalmenson
Curated by Maya Tounta
2018 02 15 – 2018 04 01
Kim? Contemporary Art Centre
Sporta iela 2 k-1, LV-1013, Rīga
Photography: Ansis Starks
