Never Land Alone, a two person show by Jack Lavender and Isaac Lythgoe ran from January 23 through February 27 in the mezzanine room of Paris’ Eric Hussenot. Organised by project space Exo Exo, the show and the space acted out a journey into what Lythgoe describes as “fantasy living”, realised as something of a scripted shrine.
With various items scattered across the room, occupying floor placements, ceiling spots and spaces that are made into thresholds, the hierarchies of installation seem muddled and it is at once immersive. The items in the duo’s environment include a novelty beer mug from ‘PARIS’, a bed headboard with an image of 90s film character The Mask printed over its leather surface, a burning joss stick, another headboard with Michael Jackson’s eyes peering through, and a Kenzo trainer box tucked behind a curtain.
The two headboards create a space between them, further emphasised by the white net curtains that play the role of delicate walls in the middle of the space, revealing themselves yet alluding simultaneously to something more private.
Never Land Alone‘s press release is a text written by Lythgoe describing the mating rituals —and his feelings about them —of the male pseudoscorpion, whose claws shake and the male bowerbird, who carefully decorates his love nest with trinkets and specific items.
In plain sight in the gallery space a metal sculpture by Lavender and a transparent obelisk by Lythgoe sit and, according to the London-based artists who wrote to us about the show, “take up something of a dance, something like the first dance at a wedding”.**
Exhibition photos top right.
Header image: Jack Lavender + Isaac Lythgoe, Never Land Alone (2016) Exhibition view. Courtesy Exo Exo and Galerie Eric Hussenot, Paris.
