Cross Toasting

As well as a French person will refuse to toast with an empty glass, a German or Austrian person will refuse to toast with arms crossed in fear of seven years of bad luck, bad sex or even ugly children. A Danish person will toast with anything, anyone and anyhow. Maybe that’s why many Danish kids are transparent and bald until they turn five, paying for their parents’ carelessness. Cross Toasting presents the works of Flora Aussant and Frederik Exner as well as a collaborative piece made specifically for Cabanon. Flora Aussant’s wall piece No Fun Formicarium is present in the room almost like a wide screen TV. Her sculptural works are inspired by synthetic ant-nests, pharmacy cupboards and post-minimalist sculpture amongst other things. The chrome spheres in the cavities are recurrent motives in her works, resembling balls from a wooden labyrinth game or from a physics experiment visualizing Newton’s laws; tokens representing some kind of unit for observation. The works are exploring how insects studies has been misused in neoliberal social models about work and productivity, mistaking humans for ants. Aussant works primarily with video and sculpture and has been interested in the circulation of dogmatic discourse in contemporary society. Frederik Exner presents two large drawings for the first time. Both drawings depict some kind of box in a very simplified body-shape, almost like a coffin hanging upside down. The content of the seemingly technical box is a synthesized bone structure joining in the middle in a sort of architecture, a “place” for something, resembling a reliquary without its relic. Exner is working primarily in sculpture and is interested in religious art and his universe could be the imagery of a strange mythology not belonging to humans. He works primarily with figurative sculpture, but has of lately also included more minimalistic elements in his work. The collaborative installation Seven Years, Eleven Meters Square presents two tongues sticking out from a hole in the floor, trying to reach each other in a french kiss or trying to get a zip from one of the visitors’ drink. But be careful before you feed them, they might have their arms crossed, who knows whats going on down there? But then again, being buried under a carpet floor trying to reach your tongue out of a pile of aquarium gravel already seems like quite bad luck. Flora Aussant (born 1993 in Rennes, France) lives and works in the Paris region. She holds a master in photo and video from l’École Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Paris (2019). Frederik Exner (born 1991 in Aarhus, Denmark) lives and works in the Paris region. He holds a bachelor from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (2019), a bachelor and a master from l’École des Beaux-Arts de Paris (2022, 2024). Cabanon is a central Parisian pop-up exhibition initiative run by Anaïs Horn & Eilert Asmervik, est. in 2023.