Kim Laybourn

Window of Otherworldly Delights

August 13th -15th

The video sculpture «Window of Otherworldly Delights» relates to the original property of the landscape painting, as a window through which one could view foreign and exotic worlds. Through the window of landscape paintings, one could even get a unique look at landscapes, adapted to such an extent to the subjective perspective of the human gaze on nature and notion of the picturesque, as it has changed through the ages, that one would only be able to experience it through here. The core element of the installation is comprised of four customized screens arranged in the form of a window. Played across the screens there is a looped 3D simulation of natural elements that are acting rather strange and forming an otherworldly landscape. Layers of the screens have been separated, which makes them appear at first glance only to emanate a bright white light. In order to perceive the video one must to look though the components placed in the exhibition room. Through this window, one sees a section, a piece of interpreted and structured nature, through which a water simulation, in an otherworldly manner, draws figures in the air, like wind blowing around the invisible. It is an ode to the unnatural, to the otherworlds; the not yet discovered, which is hidden around us. A fantasy world where the immaterial materializes and draws shapes and figures in the empty space between the viewer and the surroundings. As Simone Weil describes it in Gravity and Grace; is the only thing, that is not affected by the forces of gravity and nature; the supernatural, which is here drawn by its absence of influence from these elementary laws.

Laybourn explores the unknown and imperceptible, that which cannot be approached with the human sensory apparatus. The work continues his longstanding interest in the limits and overlaps of natural, unnatural and supernatural. The work has previously been shown at Studio17 in Stavanger and is here presented in an extended and further elaborated version.

Kim Laybourn (b.1988) graduated from the master’s degree program at the Oslo Art Academy in spring 2019. His work has previously been exhibited at Studio17 (Stavanger), PODIUM (Oslo), Kunstnernes Hus (Oslo), SOL (Nexø); Struktura- Time, The Wrong Biennale 2019/2020 (Online), Supermarket Art Fair (Stockholm), and Kunsthal Charlottenborg (Copenhagen) and latest at Løvens Hule (Online).