A kind of ceramic spine; a glistening, colorful gut-like shape in glass; a stomach pouch? A heart? A leg. An arm. Linda Morell's universe is filled with objects that resemble something human, something corporeal.

Yet, the human as a whole is disturbingly absent. The organ-like objects lie scattered, amputated. Some of the objects are seemingly about to become something else, about to have a new function. Several of them are located on small tables that evoke associations to the sphere of operating rooms, with sunken bowl-like table tops, as if to collect the liquid from something leaking. We encounter synthetic and deconstructed bodies in this universe. They can resemble prostheses, anatomical models, or parts for a robot. So who is the healing liquid that flows from the cut aloe vera leaves meant for? Who will use the draped textile hanging on a stand on the wall? Should the dried plants in the large human bone-shaped urn, which is leaning against the wall, contribute to a relaxing atmosphere for someone? What, then, is the meaning of the pointed metal that evokes such painful associations? The sculptures relate to the human body and suggest something healthful and caring, while at the same time pushing us away brutally.

It is glittering in the brushed steel, in the glass and in the glazed ceramic surfaces. Everyone has adapted to the clinical and the clean over the past year. Surfaces are regularly disinfected. Avoiding contamination has become part of everyday life; as a spinal reflex. However, Morell draws her inspiration from further back in time than the covid pandemic. The health temples of antiquity, where science and spirituality went hand in hand, have been her starting point for investigating our time's relationship to body and health. And just as much as shiny, spotless surfaces, it's all about what's inside. About the body, about containers, and about the body as a container.

Humoral pathology has its origins in the Greek natural philosophers, and their idea that everything originates in the four basic elements fire, earth, air and water. In the human body, the four elements were represented by the liver, spleen, heart and brain, and the theory was that these four organs in turn secreted the fluids yellow bile, black bile, blood and phlegm. The idea was that humans depended on these fluids being in balance to maintain good health. Too much or too little of one of them meant illness. The body became a vessel for the four elements, an inner landscape alternated between suffering from dryness, cold, heat and moisture. A closed chapter, it is easy to think. But Morell has looked at how elements of these historical ideas about the body have lived on alongside modern medical science, and how they mix with it to create new myths about an optimized body.

"Such as the food is, such is the blood: and such as the blood is, such is the flesh," wrote Thomas Coghan in the book The Haven of Health in 1584. At this time, medicine was steeped in humoral pathology. But even today, the phrase "you become what you eat" is an uncontroversial statement. From the 2000s, detox became a common phenomenon to cleanse the body of internal toxins. The human body once again became a container in need of purification; an object with vague functions that one tried to take control of, shape and construct. The pandemic that hit globally in 2020 has once again shown us how inaccessible the body's functions can be to us. Despite massive medical research, there is still much we do not know. We don't always know who might be infected, how sick we might get, and whether or how we might recover completely. The ambiguity in Morell's objects can be read as a timeless expression of the inaccessible and uncertain connected to the body and its functions.

Linda Morell (b. 1993) has a master's degree from the Academy of Fine Arts in Bergen (2019) and a bachelor's degree from the Academy of Fine Arts in Umeå. She has previously had a solo exhibition at the USF exhibition room in Bergen (spring 2020). In addition, she has participated in a number of group exhibitions, most recently in the Norwegian Artisans' Annual Exhibition 2020 at the Nordnorsk Art Museum in Tromsø. There she won the debutante prize.

The exhibition is supported by Regionale Prosjektmidler (KiN) and Billedkunstnernes Vederlagsfond.