Cuddling the Frog

When we think of an artist, we picture someone who goes into the studio to make their work. Their decisions and actions are solely focused on achieving a desired result or producing the envisioned piece. Once they’re done, they change into their everyday clothes and go back into the world as unassuming individuals. Well, TARWUK are not like that. The core concept of their work is the constant, lived collaborative process, in and out of their workplace. This makes their out-of-this-time paintings, sculptures, and often gesamtkunstwerk installations actually a residue of their practice. The interaction, collaboration, and workflow are the main part, making the tangible objects left behind sort of artifacts, relics, or even souvenirs of that endeavor. And while all this might sound too avant-garde, conceptual, and therefore not something for your average figuration buff, these objects are actually what attracted me first (only later on, I connected the dots on who’s behind the work).

One would think such a back-and-forth, synergistic process would result in a knotty stream-of-thought kind of work. But their sculptures and paintings are very compact and coherent, and their recent solo show, which closed two weeks ago at White Cube in London, Mit dem Frosch zu schmusen, ist es unmöglich. (It is impossible to cuddle the frog.) featured great examples of this. As if the sum of two identities becomes a new identity, or as they define it - a condition. And not only that, but TARWUK often collaborates with other entities too. By referencing existing concepts or using ready-made objects, handcrafted items, and materials, they’re proposing new readings, meanings, purposes, or even values for worship. In this way, the collaborative act itself amplifies the work's aesthetic or artistic value and offers the layering of ideas, crafts, and labor, both theirs and others’, as main qualities of each piece or their practice at large. —Saša Bogojev