FREEZER - to Joseph Schultz

The exhibition is based on a picture textbook entitled «FREEZE - successful freezing of Herr Moro». The book, edited by Roy Andersson, Kalle Bomann and Istvan Borbas, contains photographs of funny, touching and terrible events. The book shows some dives into the enormous archive of photographs and books that show human life and actions across large parts of the globe over the past 150 years. Visual artist Victor Lind has continued to work in this Arsenal and highlighted various texts. The exhibition is organized according to the principles of confrontational aesthetics, namely that a new and unexpected meaning arises when you set things up against each other. There may be things that illuminate and comment on each other and there may be images that show such strong contrasts that you are forced to think about what you see. Since the images are taken from different continents and different periods, the audience will be reminded of joy and innocence, war, destruction and terror. Mar also encounters strange scenes, such as examples of a not too distant past fascination with technical possibilities: We see the picture of Mr. Moro in the ice block he was chopped alive from, and we see the scientist sitting by a refrigerator where his deceased wife is put on ice in anticipation of the future medical science should be able to bring her back to life.

The exhibition is set up so that very telling pictures are set up in pairs. In the middle of the exhibition hall is a listening station where you can hear excerpts from important cultural-historical texts. The range is just as great here, in that you can hear excerpts from the Bible and the Koran, by Paul Celan and George W. Bush, Albert Einstein and police inspector Knut Rød, by Franz Kafka, William Harvey, George Orwell and Sigmund Freud… In addition, a reconstruction Victor Lind has made after a prison cage of the type that became known after terrorist suspects were detained at the US base at Guantanamo. The cage is meaningfully out of place in the beautiful park at Marienlyst. The exhibition is dedicated to the young German soldier Joseph Schultz, whose great sacrifice is known thanks to a photograph of the incident on July 20, 1941: The young Wehrmacht soldier was ordered to join an execution platoon that was to execute a group of Yugoslavs partisans. Instead of carrying out orders, he put down his rifle and helmet and lined up for those to be executed; he was shot along with these by his comrades, who chose to follow the order.

When the exhibition was produced, it was the prison camp at Guatanamo that was the most relevant. When the exhibition is now to be shown in Drammens Museum in the Lyche pavilion, it is impossible not to see the exhibition's serious theme in light of the images and stories that are today sent out from around the world from Iraqi prisons.

FRYS is an exhibition for wonder and reflection; it is an exhibition that will sharpen our critical sense and challenge our moral ideas and responsibilities.   

The press is invited to see the exhibition on Tuesday 18 May at 1 p.m.

For further information, please contact:
Åsmund Thorkildsen, tel. 32 20 09 31/97 50 04 45