Marlon Kroll:
Majestic Infinite Inner Choir
Envision yourself as a source of light—origin untraceable—charged. Made of the outline of man, all impressions of the body without a reliance on it. This light is directed and altering, porous and unchanging. Wielded by you, collapsing the boundary between what is ‘inside’ and what is ‘outside’. You, the source of light, a conduit of attention. You, positioned to inspect, gape, pry, to transform remoteness, to lovingly gut.
To perform this act, to become the source of light, you open yourself up to the other, the object before you, necessarily rely on the folding of, folding over, folding in of different aspects of your body. The collar bone stacked on top of the hips stacked in alignment with the feet, perhaps fingers placed on lower back as you bend, or cramped into the crease created as the torso contorts to accommodate your direction of attention, the space which beckons your light at the highest degree.
You exalt the silhouette of your body, pressing the organs into new intimacy, peering through an inviting opening, illuminating the interior, becoming yourself an opening, suspending time in slowing breaths, in and out, oxidising. As you stand still in the suspension of ego, of your personal desires, in obliteration of the awareness of your body, you open yourself to the truth of the other, its composition, its proposal.
Is it only after your light has shone on the other that you piece together its proposition? Or, in that moment of observation are you fermenting, metabolising sensation through different angles, absorbing the secretion and signification of colour, of form, of cliche, taking in a sense of a figure without its defined representation?
Now that you’ve experienced eternity, simultaneity, the sublimation of your perception. Now that the details and intricacies of the other have drawn you out into a state of contemplation, synthesising its projection with your own hunger, only to excrete you back into the confines of flesh, of your perimeter. Now that you recoil from the stillness of sight, of listening, of touching, of smelling, recoil from that specific openness of your light shining toward a frequency, you move inward toward absence.
Then do you consider the shape of an apple or the contour of its stem? Do you consider the protruding curve of a belly and the contents it conceals? Do you consider that water is a blue pool and yellow is the life-sustaining sun, that orange is the ochre burning of the sky as the sun makes its retreat, do you consider these all as simultaneous? As evidence of divinity? You are held in a tight amorphous clasp of suspension, “detached, empty, and ready”, again you offer up your gifts, your “purest form of generosity”1, your light, your attention, your majestic, infinite, inner choir.
-Pamela Beyer
1*Weil, S. (1952). Gravity and Grace. Routledge.
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Marlon Kroll (b. 1992, Hamburg, Germany) is an artist living and working in Montreal. He holds a BFA in Ceramics from Concordia University and is one of nine laureates of the Darling Foundry’s 2019-2022 Montreal Studio Program. He was the 2020 recipient of the William and Meredith Saunderson Prize for Emerging Artists. Selected recent exhibitions include Management, NY (2024), Eli Kerr, Montreal (2023) Pangee, Montreal (2022) and Galerie Acapella, Naples, Italy (2022). This exhibition marks the Kroll’s first time showing in Los Angeles.
I notice the sculpture on the table. I move toward it. I depress and extend my tongue. I elevate my posterior tongue and constrict my pharynx. I draw the sides of my tongue upward and back and ask how it will be placed on the wall, what the material is, why the fan is set in the carved interior space. I watch as he lifts his arms out to the side, clasps each hand around the piece, holds it up, positioning himself as the wall it will be hung on.
To perform this act, to become the source of light, you open yourself up to the other, the object before you, necessarily rely on the folding of, folding over, folding in of different aspects of your body. The collar bone stacked on top of the hips stacked in alignment with the feet, perhaps fingers placed on lower back as you bend, or cramped into the crease created as the torso contorts to accommodate your direction of attention, the space which beckons your light at the highest degree.
I lean over engaging my flexor muscles to enable bending forward, arching the middle of my back, folding myself over, pressing my organs closer to one another. With my stomach stacked, my superior, inferior, medial, and lateral extraocular muscles activate. I peer through the slit in the front of the sculpture, acting as light, perceiving the back of him as a wall revealed through another carved out space at the back of the piece.
You exalt the silhouette of your body, pressing the organs into new intimacy, peering through an inviting opening, illuminating the interior, becoming yourself an opening, suspending time in slowing breaths, in and out, oxidising. As you stand still in the suspension of ego, of your personal desires, in obliteration of the awareness of your body, you open yourself to the truth of the other, its composition, its proposal.
With my light streaming in the front of the piece and his body placed as the wall streaming allowed perception to stream into the space between the back of the piece and where the wall will one day be, where a slim section has been removed, there is another perspective I am enticed toward.
Is it only after your light has shone on the other that you piece together its proposition? Or, in that moment of observation are you fermenting, metabolising sensation through different angles, absorbing the secretion and signification of colour, of form, of cliche, taking in a sense of a figure without its defined representation?
I raise my body from the bent position, moving my arms back to my sides, my hands still resting on my hips, and draw my focus across the table from the sculptures over to their companion pieces. I receive the impression of drawings composed of roundedness, of flecks, of shading, conveying an undetermined architecture, informed by the lasting impression of the sculptures. I am awash in a semiotic energy retained, within the feeling of having had a secret revealed to me.
Consider whether the proposition occurs during this simultaneity, when border and boundary are swallowed by the great medium of perception where knowledge communicates through suggestion rather than shown meaning. After attention, after the profound act of humility where attention reveals itself as “the rarest and purest form of love”, your digestion begins. Peristalsis of the formal features of the proposal circulates while the border between self and other, between self and object, regenerates itself to leave you only with a self bristling against new lack. I am digesting the power of that secret as it passes through the three gates. In circular motions, in my interior the proposition is regulated at the junction of each part, at the junction of each opening. I feel how they stutter, how they replicate themselves. In this moment, I cannot discern distance, I am confused about outside and inside.
Now that you’ve experienced eternity, simultaneity, the sublimation of your perception. Now that the details and intricacies of the other have drawn you out into a state of contemplation, synthesising its projection with your own hunger, only to excrete you back into the confines of flesh, of your perimeter. Now that you recoil from the stillness of sight, of listening, of touching, of smelling, recoil from that specific openness of your light shining toward a frequency, you move inward toward absence.
I am within a map without explicit instruction.
Then do you consider the shape of an apple or the contour of its stem? Do you consider the protruding curve of a belly and the contents it conceals? Do you consider that water is a blue pool and yellow is the life-sustaining sun, that orange is the ochre burning of the sky as the sun makes its retreat, do you consider these all as simultaneous? As evidence of divinity? You are held in a tight amorphous clasp of suspension, “detached, empty, and ready”, again you offer up your gifts, your “purest form of generosity”1, your light, your attention, your majestic, infinite, inner choir.
-Pamela Beyer
1*Weil, S. (1952). Gravity and Grace. Routledge.
***********************************************************
Marlon Kroll (b. 1992, Hamburg, Germany) is an artist living and working in Montreal. He holds a BFA in Ceramics from Concordia University and is one of nine laureates of the Darling Foundry’s 2019-2022 Montreal Studio Program. He was the 2020 recipient of the William and Meredith Saunderson Prize for Emerging Artists. Selected recent exhibitions include Management, NY (2024), Eli Kerr, Montreal (2023) Pangee, Montreal (2022) and Galerie Acapella, Naples, Italy (2022). This exhibition marks the Kroll’s first time showing in Los Angeles.
