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BEING

As a fool you shall always fail, you shall either fail by staying a fool or by becoming a hero, but it is in failure you will succeed.

As an Artist, Bjørn Venø's approach has been to use the guise of the fool, for that is a character that is unbound from any paradigm and the fools gaze is not influenced by preconceptions. A distinction has to be made between the natural fool and the licenced fool. The natural fool is the one who has no language; whilst the licenced fool walks between the borders of language and nonsense, but never grows roots in either place.

Venø's starting point was heterosexual male identity and with the series ‘BEING’ he looked at two classic male heroic icons through the eyes of the fool, to investigate if it would reveal the male heroic ideal as a utopian dream and the figurative hero as a poster boy for their time. Thor Heyerdahl a representation of the Norwegian man, the underdog with a crazy idea that leads to success and Audi Murphy embodying the American dream, a man who can make his fortune from nothing.