Marius Engh. Bohemia (Serpentinous Embrace)

Veda presents Bohemia (Serpentinous Embrace), a solo exhibition by Marius Engh. The works presented are the result of research begun by Engh in 2018 in which he investigates the cultural life and ideas arising from the historical landscape, spirit and etymology of the name Bohemia.
Previous exhibitions with this title are: Dromomania, Van Etten, Oslo; Phynance Argothique, Hulias, Oslo (2021); Bohemia (Dr. Faustroll's Study), Jane / K.O. S A, Oslo (2021); Bohemia (In the Gesture of Swimming or Praying), Kunstnerforbundet, Oslo (2020); Bohemia (Les Jours et les Nuits), Luis Adelantado, Valencia (2020); Bohemia, K.O.S A, Oslo (2019) and Bohemia (I), VIS, Hamburg (2018).
The exhibition opens on 24 November 2022 at the gallery's headquarters in Via delle Cascine 35 and will be on view until January 31, 2023.
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C’monna, why’want to, surely gonna make it a try
Chiquita, I needa, cut me off a piece of ya…
Attacked by monsters
Kissing dogs

Smoking and poking, changing in the blink of an eye
Fly high by my window at night…

Lately a message talks about a place in the world
Little by little the mystery begins to uncurl
Snakey’s awakey and he wants a little piece o’ the pie
C’monna, why’want to, surely this’ll cause you to die.
– Meat Puppets, Attacked by Monsters, SST (1989)

I told you the case of that intuitive girl who suddenly came out with the statement that she had a black snake in her belly.
Well now, that is a collective symbol. That is not an individual fantasy, it is a collective fantasy.
I first thought perhaps she was crazy, but she was only highly intuitive. She had intuited a typical, or archetypal, image.
– Carl Gustav Jung , Excerpt of interview by Dr. Richard Evans of the University of Houston. Originally released by Penn State University (1957)

One of the most important features in the mythology of Hermes is his presiding over the common intercourse of life, traffic, journeys, roads, boundaries, and so forth, and there can be no doubt that it was chiefly in such relations as these that he was intended to be represented by the Hermae of the Greeks and by the Termini of the Romans, when the latter were identified with the Hermae. It is therefore natural that we should look for the existence of this symbol in the very earliest times in which the use of boundary-marks was required; and in such times the symbols would be of the simplest character, a heap of stones or an unhewn block of marble.
–A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890) , William Smith, LLD, William Wayte, G. E. Marindin, Ed
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Marius Engh
Marius Engh (1974, Oslo) understands objects by their ability to give and retain information, as representatives of a standardized, everyday way of life whose function and meaning refer to a given inheritance. His work appropriates these already existing forms and then replaces them in another context or under new readings, creating a sort of formalist encounter whose expression displaces the predominant cultural narrative, as well as the way of relating to its environment. A selection of recent solo exhibitions includes Krutthuset i Maridalen (Oslo) Galerie Emanuel Layr (Rome), STANDARD Gallery (Oslo) and VEDA (Florence). His works have been included in exhibitions at Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (Paris), Munchmuseet (Oslo), Tenerife Espacio de las Artes (Tenerife), Glassbox, (Paris) Henie Onstad Art Center (Hovik), Kunsthall Oslo, (Oslo), Westfälischer Kunstverein (Munster), Bergen Kunsthall (Bergen), Witte de With (Rotterdam) and Kiasma (Helsinki).