Marius Engh - B o h e m i a

Ms. Aars: “It is interesting as a word, B o h e m i a,
because it is so stigmatised. How did he come to it?
Mr. Engh: One thing leads to another. I followed the money.

Marius Engh travelled to Bohemia to see St. Joachimsthal,
whose mined bowels had given birth to the silver dollar, to
cobalt and uranium, to polonium and radium, all of which led to
vast, almost incomprehensible consequences for the world.

The large, though rarely examined concentration of dystopian
material in the history of St. Joachimsthal, today called
Jáchymov, is the background and the context that reveals
Marius Engh’s concerns as an artist and as a person in the world.
It became a place to go to and a site of his investigations
inadvertently, while he was tracing the origin of the dollar sign.
He chose to follow it in his role as a journeyman, engrossed in
the atmosphere such experience invokes - travelling suspended
between times and places.

The works in the Bohemia exhibition are extractions drawn from
that travel, encapsulating materiality of the time they draw from
(Jáchymov), and the time they are produced in (Oslo), as
merging time vessels. They are executed with precision and a
formal decisiveness that renders them laconic and mysterious,
radiating a pending atmosphere of works that anticipate
reading.
The production of works in Bohemia is kindly supported by the
Norwegian Ministry of Culture.



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