LELLO//ARNELL - Jørgen Craig Lello & Tobias Arnell Tipping Porters Not Allowed Galerie Elisabeth & Reinhard Hauff, 2024
"For a time I would feel I belonged still to a world of straightforward facts; but the feeling would not last long. Something would turn up to scare it away." - Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness In 1974, the Greek-backed right-wing coup of the democratically elected president of Cyprus, and the ensuing Turkish invasion of the island, led to the shutting down of the Nicosia International Airport. Shortly thereafter, it was declared a United Nations controlled Buffer Zone. The airport had been opened just six years earlier, and the building – designed by the German architecture office Dorsch und Gehrmann – was praised as a modern achievement for its well-organized and streamlined design. Today, the airport is still part of the island-wide UN buffer zone, and has suffered substantial corrosion and decay after 50 years of abandonment. In this, a time marked by the significant erosion of and challenges to the Western societal project – through geopolitical instability and reignition of East-West tensions, post-truth in our public and political discourses, climate change, increase in authoritarian sensibilities as well as the fallout of late capitalism – uneasiness, discomfort, and dread is looming in the collective psyche. For the artists, the non-place of Nicosia has held the function of a pivot point for this boiling mess of concepts. An esoteric foundation to tether onto, which holds within its empty, abandoned shell the ghostly, half-century-old contours of questions that are revived and reiterated today. The liminal and ubiquitous nature of airports – as place and architecture alike – emphasizes the impact of this ruin, and holds visceral implications about ourselves, our society, our history, and our destiny. LELLO//ARNELL have consistently worked with perception as a key concept throughout their practice, and their work has always revolved around their topics as viewing platforms to observe our contemporary selves. The notion of apocalypse, as instilled in their formative years; familiar, formulaic, worn, and even heroic, has been replaced with something new. Something more chaotic, unpredictable, and fragmented. Something which is difficult to put into words. For Tipping Porters Not Allowed, their conceptual methodology persists, while their approach to process has been more disjointed and experimental. Through a series of practices, examination, sketching and observations, they have attempted to give structure to a reading of their contemporary vantage point through artistic means by way of more fluid and intuitive processes than before (text: LELLO//ARNELL). LELLO//ARNELL (Jørgen Craig Lello & Tobias Arnell, *1978) have exhibited widely across Europe. Works by the artist duo have been acquired by a number of public and private collections, such as the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Oslo, the Sørlandets Art Museum (SKMU) in Kristiansand, the International Centre of Graphic Arts (MGLC) in Ljubljana/Slovenia and the Statoil Art Collection. LELLO//ARNELL have completed major public commissions for the Oslo Central Station (2017), the Haugenstua School in Oslo (2016), new regional hospital in Østfold (2015), the University of Oslo (2013), the Norwegian School of Economics in Bergen (2012), the INSPIRIA Science Center in Sarpsborg (2011) and the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI) in Lillestrøm (2010).