Mirrors of Mortality
Mirrors of Mortality
* The Norwegian Art Tax (Kunstavgiften) is a legally mandated 5% fee added to the public sale price of visual artworks. It is paid by the buyer and is designed to fund artist grants, scholarships, and collective compensation schemes managed by Bildende Kunstneres Hjelpefond (BKH).
Mirror of Mortality asks a single question. How much longer will humans walk the earth?
It traces two and a half million years of our existence, from the first stone tools to artificial wombs. It runs from the 1,280 humans who survived a near-extinction to the machine that may outlast our species entirely. The 1,280 are not a metaphor. Their descendants are every person alive today. The scene is the hall of mirrors at Versailles, the palace Louis XIV built to display his own greatness, here a museum of humankind. The people of the future come to learn how we ended.
Look for the three figures. The Imperialist, the Ape and the Robot are all here, and the painting is, in a sense, about the three of them: humankind, nature, and the machine. If you've passed our window these last weeks, you've already met two. The Ape and the Robot have been standing on the plinths, watching Bakklandet go by.
The rest we'll leave to the film, and to the painting. Guttestreker's pictures are dense enough to stand in front of for an hour without catching everything inside. No two people leave having seen the same one.