Andrew Frosst: Instinctive Break

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Andrew Frosst

Instinctive Break

RBC New Works Gallery

Recently, a friend confided in me that her sleep is disturbed by a reoccurring nightmare. In this nightmare, she is undergoing a painful and invasive kind of surgery during which she is, inexplicably, fully conscious. Usually the dream begins and ends there, in a surgeon’s chair, her belly flayed open and the masked doctor removing and reorganizing her internal organs.

However, sometimes during this ephemeral, nightly medical procedure, the surgeon will find a small, encapsulated tumour within one of the more remote parts of her body. This tumour, usually isolated from the important internal organs it could possibly infect and destroy, is not concerned with killing its host, or even reproducing its cellular structures. It is not a virus.

It is not a wholly malicious object all. It is, in fact, completely harmless. But nevertheless it is out of place.

Art Gallery of Alberta March 29 - June 8, 2014

When the surgeon decides to remove tumour, the dream turns into a nightmare. The surgeon, carefully cutting away the tissue and then dissecting the growth in front of my horrified friend, is always shocked to find that it is not simply a mass of cancerous, replicating cells. No, this tumour is different – it is a hidden placeholder, a time capsule of sorts, a representation of something far more primal in nature, an artefact of the allegiance between the benign and malignant.

Sealed within the cyst, swimming aimlessly in cerebrospinal fluid, or sometimes attached to the flesh itself, can be any number of completely ‘normal’ organic compounds: mounds of hair, for example, often the same colour and lustre as the hair on the patient’s head, or extra teeth, as strong as they might be if they were set within her jawbone. Miniature hands have been found inside these tumours, sometimes even brain tissue, parts of a new torso, or malformed non-functional organs.

And perhaps most disturbingly, eyes. This is where the dream 2

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Deus Ex Machina (interior), 2012 0.75m x 1m x 1m Mixed media

Deus Ex Machina, 2010 0.75m x 1m x 1m Mixed media 4

ends and becomes reality. This scenario was not manufactured completely out of my friend’s formidable imagination. Yes, fully functioning human eyes, complete with blinking eyelids and lashes, can become lodged within a real tumour, lodged within an intestine or an ovary. It seems unbelievable, like something out of a nightmare, or surrealist horror film, or the product of some mad biologist’s obsession.

But this human detritus, called teratoma, though exceptionally infrequent, does occur. In fact, you could have a small sack of teeth and eyes within your abdomen right now and be entirely unaffected. And yet, something about that very idea is pure nightmare fuel. Why? These otherwise useful and important parts, often admired for their beauty and character when they are in the appropriate place on our bodies, when taken out of the context which they are normally understood, take on a fantastic, strange and frightening quality. They are transformed into the morbid, the grotesque. But they might not be as odd as 5

Growing, 2011 Aprox 2.8m x 3.2m x 3.4m Mixed media, collaboration with the Arbour Lake Sghool 6

Like a Twig on The Shoulders of a Mighty Stream, 2012 Dimensions variable Mixed media

18 x 22�

grows along a certain grain, or our nails curve in a predictable direction. But when a part of a human becomes detached from its uniquely human form, it ceases to be connected to this pattern of detachment, regrowth and reclamation and thus takes on a new quality entirely. It becomes something separate from but connected to us, something outside of yet part of us, something both alive and dead – alive insofar as it retains the physical properties of a living thing (it looks and feels the same), but dead as it cannot fulfill its purpose and is useless in a utilitarian sense.

Of course, the hair and fingernails on corpses cease to grow after a short time. And indeed, the eyes of the dead do not blink, though they have been known to wander‌

we initially think. They are after all just a jumble of the regular parts of a human body, things we see and interact with every day. What makes them so uncanny?

As living organisms, we are constantly shedding our skin, cutting our nails, losing and finding tiny bits and pieces of ourselves and growing attached to them again. There is a continual loss and reclamation of ourselves, a progression brought about simply by existing. A certain kind of shark, for example, develops new teeth every two weeks. Most people grow at least a half an inch of new hair every month. This constant renewal and replenishment has a profound impact on our lives, physically and metaphorically. We are defined by our emerging patterns and routines. We go through cycles. Our hair 7

Instinctive Break, 2010 Dimensions variable Mixed media 8

We are a nervous, obsessed and unsettled species. If humankind is one of the strangest of the many strange things here on Earth, then it is because our inmost desires and instincts and even some of our basic, animalistic needs have a way of working against their own impulse – as if we were under an odd compulsion to remain agitated and out of place in this world. But in spite of, or perhaps because of this anxiety, we continue to exist in the space between the far edges of

Panderus, 2012 Performance Photo: Tamara Henderson

besides us becoming human – the detached form somehow usurping our humanity? Is that terrifying hair that floats around in the bath a little bit too much like us?

Nocturne, 2010 Dimensions variable Mixed media

In a way, the moment some part of our body leaves us, it dies, although it may continue to be technically alive in an organic sense. Separation and detachment almost always mean death for us humans – death at least for the disconnected object that has left us – but sometimes even for the host of the object ourselves.

Does that explain then, the categorical human revulsion and the fear of these detached parts, these missing pieces? Perhaps it is natural, akin to our fear of death, something bred into our unconscious minds through millions of years of evolution. Are we like baby rabbits then, even ones who have never encountered a bird before, small and weak, cowering at the sight of a hawk’s shadow? Or is it our fear of not being human, of being detached from nature? Or, more strangely, is it our fear of other things

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The Spirit of Garfield, 2012 17cm x 24cm, 104 pages Book, collaboration with Tamara Henderson Photo: Tamara Henderson Residue, 2010 Dimesnions variable Performance and installation 12

reason and madness. We thrive on the tension between these dichotomies – the banal and sublime, numinous and natural, consciousness and unconsciousness, rational and irrational, life and death. And it is at some break along that broad scale, a small point in the overlap of that vast spectrum of light and darkness, that the expression of our most human qualities can be found – and supressed.

never thought possible, to insert ourselves in places we could never be and thus to see things we could never normally see. It is like a voice reading news on the radio in a different language, but occasionally switching to an ancient and beautiful language that we all speak fluently – and it is in the overlap between that language and our own we hear the siren’s song of what could be.

- J.D Mersault

If these liminal qualities express our most base unconscious drives and desires, they are perhaps to be reviled and cast aside.

But there may be a reason to embrace them as well: A thing which is part of us, but also foreign in some way, gives us a unique opportunity to see ourselves in contexts we would have

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Artist Biography

Andrew Frosst is a visual artist from Calgary who has studied fine arts at Concordia, Montreal; Malmö Art Academy, Malmö; Städelschule, Frankfurt; and Zurich University of the Arts, Zurich.

His work embraces a wide variety of media with a focus on sculpture, installation and text. In addition to his individual practice, Andrew collaborates regularly with other artists including the Arbour Lake Sghool — a Calgary-based artist collective he co-founded in 2003. He has exhibited work in Canada, the US, the UK, Sweden, France, the Netherlands and Switzerland and received an Alberta Foundation for the Arts grant in 2013.

Writer Biography

J.D Mersault is a writer and visual artist from Canada. His fiction has been published in a variety of mediums in North America, and he has recently completed a long novel, Rhubarb, which will hopefully be edited and published sometime before he dies.

He currently lives in Calgary, Alberta where he is recovering from a long and damaging education in philosophy.

The RBC New Works Gallery features new works by Alberta artists. Initiated in 1998 and named the RBC New Works Gallery in 2008, this gallery space continues the Art Gallery of Alberta’s commitment to supporting Alberta artists.

© Art Gallery of Alberta 2014 ISBN: 978-1-77179-005-5 Editor: Catherine Crowston Design: Cut+Paste Design Inc. and Charles Cousins Photography: courtesy Andrew Frosst except where noted Essay: J.D. Mersault Printing: Burke Group Printed in Canada The Art Gallery of Alberta is grateful for the generous support of our many public and private donors and sponsors, as well as the ongoing support of the City of Edmonton, the Edmonton Arts Council, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the Canada Council for the Arts.

Works in the Exhibition Instinctive Break, 2010-2014 60.96 x 154.2 x 121.9 cm Mixed media Terminus, 2014 Dimensions variable Printed book

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Front Cover Image Instinctive Break, 2010 Mixed media

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