Amanda Lydért & Frederik Nystrup-Larsen I Landscape Is a Verb (Imported)

Landscape is a Verb (Imported), Amanda Lydért & Frederik Nystrup-Larsen

Some things are kind of criminal to move - like

seashells found on beaches and very rare flowers

found in valleys or jungles.

Other things are only seemingly that... kind of

criminal to move - like fruit and vegetables across

the Atlantic.

Moving 50 coconuts, although in concrete and

plaster, seems like a fragile idea.

Some things make sense to move -
like Cuban stamps sucking on sunbleached

postcards reaching friends two months past your

own arrival.
And so very rare flowers moved closer anyway.

Some things are tempting to move - like beauty.

And so you test moving beauty across time zones.

Test if beauty bends when beauty moves.

Really a test to test if beauty translates into future

times l as we move in fast forward.

Because one thing moves on its own.

Time does not care about your yesterday.

Hold on to the most beautiful souvenir in the world.

Amanda Lydért & Frederik Nystrup-Larsen

The exhibition centers around the use and consumption of naturalistic imagery and the exchange of beauty, featuring works that originate from Lydért (b. 1994, Denmark) and Nystrup-Larsen ́s (b. 1992, Denmark) residency in Havana, Cuba, earlier this year. As a choir, the paintings form a bouquet of distorted flowers, motifs accumulated from manipulations of Cuban stamps. By copying, imitating and conserving The Landscape, the works pose as souvenirs for the future, paying an homage to nature, the ultimate beauty ideal. One that is meant simultaneously to please and spark discomfort.

Extending from Lydért and Nystrup-Larsen's working concept 'Import/export', the works are imported from their original context in Cuba to the Copenhagen gallery. Here, they pose alongside placeholders, proxies, of other works, shown alongside the paintings in the Cuban install, the exhibition making visible what can be transferred and what is lost.