ICE ON THE PREYES

Jens Hüls Funder

ICE ON THE PREYES

November 17th, 2022 – January 5th, 2023

Works

Eyes on the prize
This drawing shows a pair of parents trying to build a fortress of healthy play around their child.

Eldridge
This digital drawing is a portrait of professional skateboarder and podcast host Justin Eldridge. The podcast is called The Nine Club and is about skateboarding. This title refers to a saying in skateboard contests. When a contestant scores above nine points in a run this person is a member of the “nine club”.

Crocodile Belly
The dramatic setting of five monkeys teasing one crocodile takes hold in various nursery rhymes across the world. In different languages and with different melodies the monkeys get eaten by the crocodile one by one as the singing child counts down from five. What happens at the end of the song differs from version to version. In some of them the song ends with the last monkey getting eaten. In others the monkeys are resurrected by various instances of deus ex machina; the crocodile sneezing them back to life or falling on its back bursting its belly open for the monkeys to crawl out.

Cartoon
This is the thumbnail logo for an imaginary cartoon show. The cut-out collage style of the show is put together through an animation program mimicking old stop motion techniques. The analog mimicry, the application of photographical textures hints at the reuse of disposable paper.

Rats (The LEGO)
LEGO has become a universal symbol for play in the old fashion sense with a brand ideology that thrives within that symbolic consensus. Meanwhile there is a need to keep up with various franchise narratives in order to compete commercially. This balancing act on the industrial scale is at the same time a negotiation of the figurative and the abstract. The abstract as building blocks adapting to unlimited imagination and the figurative as a limited form with a building instruction.

Rats (The shelf)
The plywood shelf is a leftover from a renovation at the Nørrebro library in Copenhagen that happened during the summer of 2022. It was originally a bench installed in the children’s section where only a glass facade separated it from the skateboard facilities outside. Often skaters would sit in the exterior window sill smoking and drinking with their backs against the glass and toddlers just on the other side. The children’s section was suspended and I figured it had to do with the bad influence right outside the window. The librarian told me it was because of a strange smell. He said that they suspected rats.