Artists

Jens Settergren

Press release

Wilson Saplana is pleased to present Jens Settergren's video installation Milk Plus. A sensuous and hypnotizing universe of sound and visuals, that invites us on a journey through the symbolic and cultural meaning of milk.

From the role of milk in our reproduction and as an image of health and optimization of the human being. The video work, which consists of a floor-to-ceiling LED screen with four corresponding cruciform screens, opens with a classic and recognizable scene: White, smooth milk is poured into a glass against a sky-blue background. Immediately, this hyper-stylistic image evokes associations with cleanliness, strength, and natural food from cows on pasture, with breast milk, and with our general belief in milk as a health agent. Along the way, the mood of the video changes, and as in a surreal milk commercial, we are taken on a journey through green apothecary crosses into the body's interior, and on to a dialogue between a 3D-animated fetus and a digitally processed voice-over that proclaims "Making Milk is Making Magic".

As viewers, we are taken into a universe where milk possesses a fascinating and transformative power. In a poetic way, Settergren uncovers how milk – often associated with infants, innocence and purity – in the hands of industry and consumer aesthetics is both eroticized and commercialized. It is recognizable and synthetic at the same time, when the velvety, chalky white milk flows in slow motion and almost seems to acquire mythological creative power. The rhythmically changing images on the five screens point to how language and visual associations linked to milk have changed in line with technological development - and to man's constant striving for optimization of himself.