X Museum

X Museum is delighted to present ‘Foreign Object Debris’ from 5 September to 5 December 2021, the Norwegian-German artist Yngve Holen’s first solo show in Asia. The exhibition brings together more than 30 new works from Yngve Holen’s extended practices that are grounded in his decade-long explorations of industrial manufacturing, contemporary food productions, and commercial airliners.

Yngve Holen, Trypophobia, Ring light, Uranium glass, steel, silicone, 530 x 450 x 140 mm, 2021, X Museum

In the aviation industry, Foreign Object Debris (FOD) indicates the objects found in an inappropriate location and could potentially cause damage due to being in that location. Dislocation becomes more disruptive in this sense than other inherent qualities of an object; FOD then turns into a fluid concept—the familiar objects are spontaneously rendered foreign when separated from their designated context and location in the machinery system. In the exhibition ‘Foreign Object Debris’, machinery parts are extracted and revamped into biomimetic debris that starts to reveal their organic or even human-like presence. If not seeing man and machine from a dualistic point of view, Yngve Holen’s works highlight the overlapping realm between the two. Drawing from disassembled industrial parts, works in this exhibition constantly skip between man-machine complex and body-mind paradoxes, and in turn, lay matrices for human and technology symbiosis.

Yngve Holen, Experience After Birth, Bronze, aluminium, 460 x 530 x 460 mm, 850 x 550 x 550 mm (Base), 2021, X Museum

Body as the primary subject to Yngve Holen’s sculptural works, be it absent or present, often looms out through the metamorphosis from organs to industrial parts, poultries to debris, figures to humanoids, and flesh to ornaments. The age of mass digitalisation grants us the convenience of quick data access and process, allowing Holen’s metamorphosis—the makings of ghost-in-the-machine, to unfold in multiple different ways. Central to the techniques that Holen adopts are 3D scanning and printing. Outlining a contemporary dilemma of image representations: the two-fold treatment turns the form of an object into collections of data without reservation of its materiality, but instead enables the filling of new matters to the previous cavity—reminiscent of the bulldozing and the subsequent construction of a site: the original structure is removed for the replacement of the new—old minds in new bodies.

**(Left) Yngve Holen, Anthroposophic Architecture, Cross-laminated timber, wood stain, Dia. 2000 x D 300 mm, 2021, X Museum**

**(Right) Yngve Holen, Neuroeconomics, Plastic, aluminium, 1200 x 1300 x 700 mm, 900 x 1100 x 800 mm (Base), 2021, X Museum**

Making use of opposite materials ranging from cross-laminated timber and carbon fibre to aluminium honeycomb and Uranium glass, Yngve Holen turns the ground level exhibition space of X Museum into a boundless mix of interior furnishings, readymade objects, and anthropomorphic machinery parts off the production line. Under such arrangements, ‘Foreign Object Debris’ renders a hallucinating landscape where symptoms of repressed desires and attempts of heroic egos converge. Comprised of biomimetic objects: from the flesh patterned carpet, 3D printed cow sculpture, to lotus-shaped blown glass lit by a ring light, ‘Foreign Object Debris’ positions a lens through which we can see how desires of humankind steadily shape and consume industrial designs and productions, or even on the flip side, how technological advancements modify and configure human consumptions.

Yngve Holen, FOD, Carbon fibre, foam core, 1010 x 2700 x 290 mm, 2021, X Museum

Yngve Holen, You Got Issues, Plastic, mesh and steel, 1770 x 1850 x 365 mm, 2016, X Museum

About the Artist

Yngve Holen (b. 1982, Braunschweig), currently lives and works in Berlin and Oslo. He graduated from HfBK Städelschule in Meisterschüler Bildhauerei, and University of Applied Arts Vienna in Architecture. Holen primarily works with sculptures and installations, enlightening the human-machine crisis by delving into a wide range of modern specialised industries, from automotive, food production and robotic science, to plastic surgery and aviation. Holen is the recipient of the Overbeck Prize (2020), Robert Jacobsen Prize (2017), and ARS VIVA (2014/15). He has held solo exhibitions extensively around the EU, including Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo (2019); Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (2018); Kunsthalle Basel (2016). His works were also included in group exhibitions such as the 9th Berlin Biennale and Take Me (I’m Yours) at The Jewish Museum (2016).