Beauty is business
I crawled out of the desert as the sun was nearing the flat horizon. The rock outcroppings, signaling the end of my journey, were covered with blue flowers slowly opening their pedals to the small nocturnal forms that hovered over them, waiting to suck their nectar. My mouth was dry and my lips cracked. I dragged my knees across the stones that separated the Jamaican sands to the west from the lush jungle ring just before the Barbador harbor. My skin flaked off like cracking paint, leaving traces on the stone. The day had been dry and hot and I would not survive another unsheltered night.
Then I noticed something small and bright dancing before me in the darkening landscape. Clinging to the lowest branch of a lone tree, a slender silver cone. Blurry to my eyes it was like the Madonna beckoning to me. On that blessed branch, was a single icicle, about 20cm long, dripping onto a dark spot on the stone, defying natural law and the days heat.
I touched it shyly with my fingers. It was cold, wet, but I still did not trust my senses. I ran my tongue over it experiencing pleasure that I had never conceived. My limbs shuttered with joy, my insides laughed. Like Captain Shaddock I found a miracle, but mine was only for me.
Sucking on it, I managed to pull myself onto my weak legs and stumble in the darkness until I reached the shore. I was wrapped in blankets by the crew and placed in a long boat to be ferried to the barque anchored in the Barbador harbor. They had not given me up for dead. They had waited even for a lowly cabin boy. The boat rocked and I slept deep.
Capitan (then cabin boy) Timothy “little John” Bronfman. 1784
On the 4th of February 2010 'Pavilion 2009' presents:
Dirk van Lieshout (NL), Klara Adam (DE), Marije Vermeulen (NL) and Guido Nieuwendijk (NL)
curated by Frido Evers and Jonathan Brewer
The artists will present themselves at the Open Forum at the Oslo Academy of the Arts at 18:00 that same day.
At 19:00 the show will open
Performance will start at 19:30
The exhibition will be open on the 5th and 6th of Februari from 12:00 till 17:00
Pavilion2009.org, St Olavsgata 32
