As a veterinary student from 1987 to 1993, Morten Viskum spent long hours reading in the Dissection Room of the Norwegian Veterinary College.
His study desk was beside a display case in which was exhibited half a calf in formaldehyde. Here he would sit and daydream, with no particular direction to his thoughts.
It was only when Viskum went on to the National Academy of Art, where he studied from 1993 to 1997, that things fell into place. This is what his daydreaming had been about: art.
The works from the series 'ANATOMEN' (THE DISSECTION ROOM) have as their starting point a lithograph by Edvard Munch, ‘The Anatomist Schreiner I’. During the creation of these works, Viskum was blindfolded either at the start of or during the whole performance.
The works symbolize the experience of being in the dissection room, as Viskum remembers it.
