Frode Felipe Schjelderup - utstilling
22.8 - 13.9.26
To Be Or To Not Be
Essay for the exhibition "To Be Or To Not Be" by Erik Sæter Jørgensen
The first time Frode Felipe Schjelderup came to my house was after some gig at Folken I have long forgotten. We had been discussing movies and when discussing movies we were sure to eventually discuss vampire movies. Frode had said something about wanting the Bram Stoker's Dracula DVD, I had it at home, one of my first DVD purchases and a movie I remember sneaking a view of when my parents screened the Laserdisc version at the nightclub they ran back when Francis Ford Coppola was still more Godfather Coppola than Megalopolis Coppola. My apartment back then wasn't far from Folken, so off we went. I got the DVD from one of many bookcases in my living room full of DVDs, gave it to Frode, talked a bit longer and that was the end of the night.
Dracula is the eternal outsider, penetrating society without winning belonging. Remaining he who studies mortal customs from the shadows, moving through the city equal participant and witness.
That exchange contains the constants. Cinema, music, drawing, painting, sculpture and writing make up his work. The film that becomes a figure, a name becoming a character, their t-shirt becoming a band. City, country, planet made real. The artist's observation moving through fiction, forcing itself through the matter of quotidian life before returning to the inhabited mind all changed by the journey.
Frode calls himself a fiction artist. The fiction grows through sustained attention, character and revelation perpetually interweaving and chain-reacting.
Charlie the leopard in category belongs to the wild. He is the invisible presence while untamed, in captivity he is managed and watched. Charlie reverses direction. If Mowgli is the human child who learns to live among animals, Charlie suggests a reverse Mowgli: the animal who enters the human world and makes its conventions newly strange.
Charlie feels personal, the vampire clinical, present but not of the society through which he moves. This doubleness recurs throughout Frode's work. His figures can be exposed and concealed, solitary and social, recognisable and impossible at once.
Who receives permission to appear? Who remains in shadow? Watchers, watched and waiting as characters each line up for their turn.
Frode chose the title To Be Or To Not Be early and never offered any alternative.
This interruption of automatic comprehension enforces an involuntary memento mori sentiment in me. Being is denied a stable condition that conclusively affirms or denies. A leopard enters the personal. The vampire merges with the city. A remembered DVD becomes the beginning of an essay. None belong neatly where placed. Each expands the habitat.
Frode still likes vampires. I still like vampires.
Frode Felipe Schjelderups kunst springer ut av et sterkt og personlig forhold til metalmusikk og kulturen rundt den. Musikken, estetikken og menneskene fra metalmiljøet går igjen gjennom kunstnerskapet og danner utgangspunkt for et rått, direkte og umiddelbart visuelt uttrykk.
Med enkle redskaper og teknikker skildrer Schjelderup personer, symboler og motiver som opptar ham. Portretter av sentrale skikkelser fra metalmusikken står sentralt, men arbeidene beveger seg også inn i temaer som tid, politikk, rasisme, utenforskap og annerledeshet.
Repetisjon er et viktig element i Schjelderups kunst. Han vender tilbake til de samme menneskene, motivene og ideene igjen og igjen. Noen ganger handler det om metalens lett gjenkjennelige visuelle språk, andre ganger om mer abstrakte spørsmål – som tiden som går, blant annet gjennom hans arbeider med klokker.
Schjelderup forholder seg samtidig fritt til kunstverdenens etablerte regler og konvensjoner. Arbeidene følger først og fremst hans egen logikk og hans egne interesser. Motiv for motiv bygger han opp et særegent univers der metal, populærkultur og personlige erfaringer møter større spørsmål om samfunnet og det å stå utenfor.
Utstillingen ved Bryne kunstforening gir et innblikk i dette universet.