Sans Soleil

Four thoughts on feedback and stasis, in no particular order, compiled on the occasion of the exhibition "Sans Soleil".

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There were summers when weather patterns corresponded to the size of our feet. On warm days we would go down to the lake by the forest, barefooted, shoes in our hands. Walking through the long grass, we would step on bees (if lucky) or wasps (if not). Either way, our swollen feet wouldn’t fit our sneakers, leaving us prone to further injections. There were summers when we would take off our shoes and not wear them again before fall.

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The Aarne-Thompson-Uther classification system for folktales classifies The Sleeping Beauty as a type 410 tale, meaning it includes a princess who is forced by magic into a deep slumber, to be awakened much later. When she stings her finger on a spindle, the teenage princess is instantly put to sleep. So are her subjects and a forest of trees and thorns springs up around the castle.

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When wasp venom gets delivered into a recipient’s blood stream, norepinephrine halts the blood flow, while hyaluronidase facilitate the movement of cytotoxic and neurotoxic agents through the recipient’s tissue. In dermatology, hyaluronidases are used to correct the misapplication of dermal fillers administered to treat wrinkles and acne scars.

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The nests of social wasps (vespula germanica) are busy places in summer, but, around here, they don’t survive winter. Princesses, produced in the warm season, get fattened and mate, to enter hibernation in fall. Old queens die in winter and with them their subjects. Come spring, a new queen awakes from her slumber and starts spinning a nest out of fibres scraped from dead trees.

After three years of absence, returning to his studio deep in the forest, the artist was met by a number of wasp nests, 28 of which he cut down.

Zsa Zsa Krasna

Shown at Szperl , 2022.