GOING GOING. Kris Lemsalu Malone & Kyp Malone Lemsalu

Estonian artist Kris Lemsalu and American singer and multi-instrumentalist Kyp Malone (TV On The Radio) together create installations and performances using sculpture, ceramics, video, music and sound. They first worked together in 2017, creating the work Going Going for the performance biennial Performa in New York. At Den Frie, they present a new and modified version of this major work. On the opening day, the work will be activated as a durational performance, and subsequently it will stand as a total installation.

Going Going is a tribute (and a ritual farewell) to the artist couple’s close friend Philly Abe – a colourful performer and artist from New York, who passed away in 2018. The work is characteristic of the duo’s practice, which with equal parts of madness, poetry and humour reflects on life and death, rebirth and parting. Going Going unfolds as a meditative environment with Lemsalu’s characteristic ceramic works, Malone’s sound and video and a slowly moving bed as the centre – a whimsical, dreamy and otherworldly universe.

Kris Lemsalu’s artistic practice consists primarily of sculpture and performance. Often in a wonderful union of surreal fantasy worlds that partly stand as complete installations and at the same time frame her performances. The exhibited objects are part of her costumes and props, and her multifaceted oeuvre is in tune with the Dadaists’ use of objet trouvé as well as the performance art of the 60’s. With the interconnection of media, the practice of traditional crafts and the use of ceramics, she also points back to the Arts and Crafts movement and the Danish Skønvirke tradition (the Danish version of Art Nouveau), which Den Frie descends from. In a strange way, Lemsalu seems to have a lot in common with Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art’s creator J.F. Willumsen, who also worked with ceramic reliefs with intense colour combinations and with a focus on theatrical elements and the big questions of life.

Kyp Malone is a multidisciplinary artist working across medias such as painting, drawing, video and sound. He is also known as the singer and musician of the Brooklyn-based indie band TV On the Radio. Malone has performed all over the world, including Roskilde Festival in 2004 and 2011. Additionally, Malone has released solo albums under the artist name Rain Machine, worked extensively with the band Ice Balloons and most recently with the improv group Bent Arcana.