V1 Gallery is pleased to present
My So-Called LifeA solo exhibition by Lulu Kaalund
OPENING RECEPTION: FRIDAY JANUARY 20. 2023. TIME: 16.00 - 21.00
EXHIBITION PERIOD: JANUARY 21. - FEBRUARY 25. 2023.
In the iconic 90’s drama series My So-Called Life, we follow teen protagonist Angela Chase, who must navigate the trials and tribulations of a high school life. Touching on themes of love, friendship, loneliness, and the general existential dread of coming of age and attempting to carve out your sovereignty, My So-Called Life seemed to resonate with its young audience in ways that other more polished and lighthearted shows such Beverly Hills could not. However, in 1995, just one year after the show aired, the production was set on hiatus by ABC after 19 episodes, and no further seasons would be made. MTV had received the rights to air the show, and the result was that the 19 episodes were playing on weeknights, on a seemingly infinite loop.
Millennials may recall with nostalgia tuning into endless reruns in the flow-TV days of the 90s and 00s, until fragments of sound, words and images transform into mantras or a kind of ASMR. Sometimes mildly disengaged, and sometimes with the focus of a scholar, we would zone in and out to the rhythm of popular culture. In and out like a crochet needle that moves in endless stiches as it weaves yarns into an image. My So-Called Life’s 19 precious episodes are some of Lulu Kaalund’s favorite entertainment, and the show became a kind of metronome for her crochet, as she would almost meditatively watch the episodes on loop while working.
Bringing her projects on the go, Kaalund’s work extends beyond the domestic setting; You may find her crocheting in restaurants, airports, bars, nightclubs and hotel lobbies. Like an abstract diary, the artist never plans her work in advance, they grow from a few stitches into sprawling pieces guided by little else but intuition and the will and desire to create. Stiches become rows and rows become material witnesses to places, people, moods, events, and to the passing time itself. In and out of control, Angela’s eminently relatable narrative in My So-Called Life rounds off the exhibition as an allegorical mirror for the artist’s own autobiographical process, a so-called life indeed.
Lulu Kaalund, born 1988, lives and works in Copenhagen and wherever the road may take her. Her work has received enthusiastic acclaim in Wallpaper (March, 2021), i-D Magazine (January, 2021), and from NY Magazine’s senior art critic Jerry Saltz, who proclaimed on his Instagram as a comment to a selected series of various crocheted Kaalund works: “all good paintings to me” (2020). My So-Called Life is her second solo exhibition with V1 Gallery & Eighteen.
