Paper in Ten Years of Pain’ by Håvve Fjell, Hertervig Forlag, Norway, 2003.
By Stahl Stenslie. Excerpt from the text. To read the full text follow this link.
The art of Håvve face us with new ways to physically deal with aesthetics. Many would doubt it’s even possible to label his actions and performances as art. But it is. And a challenging one too. Håvve is a visionary of his own body. Over the last years I’ve witnessed how he has gone from being a fairly wild and untamed body-entertainer to a subtle and expressive body artist. It’s hard to forget the image of how both his arms were carefully into a protective position over his face and groin sown with more than a hundred stitches. Sculptured into a painful composition Håvve’s eyes witnessed the dualistic aspect of this performance: in trying to avoid pain he suffered it. Such contradictions are typical of his art. He must both control his body while he simultaneously and passionately must lose it. He must cut deep enough to almost die, but shallow enough to survive. Which cut is the deeper?
To read the full text follow this link.
Stahl Stenslie 