Morten Søndergaard

Biography

Born in 1964 in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Works and lives in Pietrasanta, Italy.

Morten Søndergaard has never ceased exploring collisions between meaning and materiality, which led him to numerous extra-linguistic experiments and links between the body and language.**

La Pharmacie des Mots (The Word Pharmacy) questions the connections between the language, body, poetry and medicine. It applies to the ten word categories (verbs, adjectives, prepositions, substantives…) the logic of a dosage and the modalities of administrating medication – including warnings, recommendations and mention of secondary effects. When we write, small elements react with each other just like a chemical reaction or synthesis. Each word is chosen in order to provoke a reaction in the reader; in the same way molecules are carefully selected by medicine to create the desired effect on the patient.*** Don’t the words written on medicine leaflets address life and death matters? A series of performances – Consultations – based on La Pharmacie des Mots (The Word Pharmacy) will allow to appreciate its therapeutic potential.

Materiality also has an incidence on the effect and perception of words. In a series of sculptures, Morten Søndergaard had words engraved in sky-blue marble slates: Rien suffit, Ne te connais pas toi-même (Nothing is enough, Do not know thyself …) Through these pieces that resemble tomb stones or commemoration plaques, the artist questions the temporality and the identity of the person talking. Who is speaking when these words, put together by a poet, are inscribed on a plaque by a stone mason? And how do we perceive what is set in stone? Does the medium endow the words with another time dimension? In Le graveur de pierre de Pietrasanta, (The stone mason from Pietrasanta), Morten Søndergaard writes: His machine whines and he drills his way through the mountain. He cuts down to the living and to the dead. This poem, as well as other from the book L’Attrape-soleil (The Sun-Catcher) that has just been released in France, will be part of a reading during the show. Among other topics are kisses, the restless being that tries, falls, gets back up, falls again, tries again, the pleasure of power and lovers who make love, although reaching the other seems impossible. The world is smooth, brutal, delicious and Morten Søndergaard embraces it with delectation and despair, melancholy and tenderness, sarcasm and humor.

** www.mortensoendergaard.com/english/: Morten Søndergaard – English introduction made by Ida Bencke
*** excerpt from Les Pharmakonfessions by Morten Søndergaard

Some artworks