Pisser Triptych, 2021

Louise Bonnet

Exhibition technician Anders Lindholm don’t always view the art as art. Instead, he might see volume and weight. Cubic meters and square meters.

Anders Lindholm: My name is Anders Lindholm, and I work as an exhibition technician and storekeeper for the museum’s painting collection.
 
Working as an exhibition technician, you don’t always view the art as art. Instead, you might see volume and weight. Cubic meters and square meters. What does the artwork look like on the back? Is there something to attach to? Is there even a backside? Or an underside?
 
The works are to be presented on a wall, suspended from the ceiling, or placed standing on the floor. The art must be secured, so that it doesn’t fall, and so that no one is tempted to take it home. From my point of view, it’s good if the art isn’t too big or heavy.
 
Before Louise Bonnet’s Pisser Triptych arrived at the museum, all I’d seen was a small photo. I didn’t understand how big the work was until I noticed the measurements. 214 centimeters tall and 722 centimeters wide! The work arrived in two large crates, a long one for the central panel, and a shorter but wider one for the two side panels. Inside the crates, each panel also had a travel frame, a kind of internal crate. The smallest of the travel frames weighed 75 kilos each. With the outer crate, the side panels weighed about 350 kilos, and the work in total weighed in at about 700 kilos.
 
The painting itself is much lighter, but its size nevertheless requires three people for the entire process: from pickup by truck at the external storage facility, to the internal transport within the museum, and finally to unpacking and installation.
 
If it were up to me, I’d say this work is way too big. Luckily, it’s not UP TO ME, which means that you now get to stand in front of it and be completely absorbed.
 
“Just as I will — though not until a few weeks after the installation — be able to see the art as art again.”