“Those who love the mechanical extensions of existence as cyborg, and use their engines to explore speeds that defy the intentions of the flesh, are those willing to trade their lives for forbidden sensations.”
~ Critical Art Ensemble, Human Sacrifice in the Rational Economy
For the last decade, Anders Lindseth has been captivated by images of cars, and in particular, ruined cars. How can something worth more than a house plummet so quickly in value? A Lamborghini that once turned heads becomes, post-collision, a formless assemblage of junk consumed by rapid ignition. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
In their pristine states, luxury and exotic cars serve as mirror-finished vessels for our identities, embodying our desires, aspirations, and societal roles. Ever since the media’s far-reaching adoption of Edward Bernays’ mid-century propagandistic psychology, the car has been sold as an extension of the self, a prosthetic ego. Bombastic paintjobs and polished contours highlight humanity’s questionable prioritization of material possessions over communal well-being and ecological stewardship. At the end of the day, everyone knows what these most costly products of heavy industry are truly designed to do: crash and burn.
In his most recent set of compositions, Lindseth provocatively invokes the paradoxical nature of fire and its leveling effects on human achievement. Challenging conventional tenets of annihilation, these rich canvases reveal the regenerative essence of the flame, the inherent capacity for growth that lies within destruction. After the conflagration, such intense color reminds us, comes the bloom. Amidst garish phase shifts, machines of acceleration and combustion—speed demons, as they’re known—turn from metal to petal. Earth’s most capricious natural weapon inevitably dispossesses the hubristic “First World” of its most priceless treasures. The perils of automobile abjection are virtually never-ending, the tragedies of capital outrace the rewards, and our losses will always exceed the price tag.
Lindseth’s Conditional Immortality is an urgent call for the reconsideration of humanity’s relationship to nature, an unflinching reevaluation of our place within it, and a critical examination of our notions of value.
In asking viewers to reconsider their relationship with nature, the artist wants to encourage that reconsideration to be one of stewardship rather than commodification. On behalf of this exhibition, he is making a donation in collaboration with the gallery to large-scale land conservation. A historic practice of the artist is to donate funds from the sales of art, and he is engaging a 10% donation model from exhibitions and encourages other artists to do the same. As such, in collaboration with Public Service Gallery, Anders Lindseth has pledged 10% of sales to Art into Acres to contribute to the designation of the Cuchilla de San Juan Biodiverse Protected area, a 44,500-acre delta in Colombia’s western Andes region.